11 October 2026 · 1 min read

Otzarreta, a sleepless night for a few minutes of light

Two hours' drive in the dead of night to meet the pollarded beeches of Otzarreta, in the Spanish Basque Country, at the hour when the forest belongs to no one.

2:30 a.m.

The alarm goes off in a sleeping house. I get up quietly; the bag has been packed since the night before. Outside, the darkness is complete.

Two hours of driving south, towards the mountains of the Spanish Basque Country. The headlights carve out the bends, the radio stays off. There is only me, the road, and one single thought: to be in the Otzarreta forest before daylight reaches it.

Silhouette of a man at the foot of a giant pollarded beech with mossy roots, in the mist of the Otzarreta forest

The approach by night

I walk into the forest by headlamp. The beam catches twisted trunks, branches spreading like open arms, roots crawling across the ground. At night, the pollarded beeches look like creatures frozen mid-movement.

I find my spot, set up the tripod, and switch off the light.

Pollarded beech with moss-covered roots on a carpet of fallen leaves, in the golden mist of Otzarreta

The wait

The cold creeping up through my feet, the dampness of the stream, total darkness. And solitude — not the kind that weighs on you, the kind that soothes. A rare stillness, found only at those hours when the world does not yet belong to anyone.

Far away, then very close, the owls call to one another. Their song is the forest's only voice, and I dare not move for fear of interrupting it.

The rising sun breaks through the pollarded beeches and sets the russet leaves of the Otzarreta forest ablaze

Daybreak

Slowly, the sky grows pale. The silhouettes emerge from the shadows one by one. And suddenly the sun breaks through the trunks: its rays cut through the mist, set the carpet of russet leaves ablaze and brush the moss-covered roots of the old beeches.

A fairy-tale setting, real for barely a few minutes.

Sunbeams through the pollarded beeches of Otzarreta, above a ground covered in red leaves

The most beautiful trees in the world

To me, the pollarded beeches of Otzarreta are among the most beautiful trees in the world. Shaped for centuries by human hands, then left to themselves, they have grown into these extraordinary forms that make this place unlike any other.

These images are that night, that silence, and those few minutes of light that were worth every hour of lost sleep.