Rivers
The Dzūkija National Park is a park of rivers and
rivulets. Where else could one find such a large variety, ranging from abundant
springs to Lithuania’s largest river Nemunas? Several tens of rivers and
rivulets – and all of them so different, each with its own character and
history! The Nemunas carries its muddy waters through the entire park, from the
ruins of the Liškiava castle to the solitary farmstead of Krikštonys, forming a
kind of axis connecting the sands of the Dainava plain and the hills of the
Dzūkų heights, as well as the lives of the forests, fields and the Nemunas
banks. Having collected the waters of all the rivers and springs of the Dainava
forest, the Merkys flows into the Nemunas at Merkinė. And how beautifully the
Ūla meanders, how picturesque its sandy banks down Zervynos are! Or take the
Grūda, another tributary of the Merkys. Making many loops, as if eager to turn
back, it flows in a wide valley of an ancient river. And the Skroblus – you
will not find another rivulet so short and so rich in water in Lithuania. From
the “Old Lady’s Garden” spring in Margionys, where it starts, to the confluence
with the Merkys, the amount of water in the Skroblus rises almost one hundred
times – so much of it is amassed from the springs hidden in deep shadowy
waterholes with steep slopes.
Down from
Merkinė, the Strauja, which once spun the wheels of as many as six watermills,
as well as the Apsingė and the Kempė flow into the Nemunas. The rivulet of
Būkaverksnis, flowing from the swamp of Lizdų Lake, disappears into the depths
of the earth. A year when it reaches the small adjacent lake of Krakinis occurs
very seldom. For centuries, huge shoals of salmon and salmon-trout had been
returning to spawn to the clear and cold rivers of the Dainava forest in
autumn, before the Nemunas dam hindered their way.