© Jürgen Sauer

"This terrace and the lower slopes are mostly treeless and covered with the burgeoning grass of spring. Cows are currently grazing, perhaps with annoyance that we’ve taken the choicest spot. Our vehicles are parked about fifteen meters below, along a dirt track that follows the brook upstream and eastward into the mountains. With an expansive prospect of the valley to the west, and of the foothills and ridges that stack up to the snowcapped peaks of the Eastern Beskids to the east, this shelf seems an ideal spot for a stronghold—common in these parts, when peopled by wild tribesmen still."

— pages 195-196, Into the Carpathians, Part 1
© Alan E. Sparks