Birutė Park, Palanga, Lithuania

Part of a sculptured old map of Lithuania, in Kaunas. Palanga is on the coast, top left, north of Memel, the old name for Klaipeda, and Kaunas in middle right, just off the map.

 

Lithuania is mostly a flat country, full of trees and green fields, lakes, and bordered by the sea, but not so many people, few roads, cars, train lines. There is a sense of nature still being very close. In the spring of 2025 I lived in Palanga, Lithuania, one block away from Birutė Park which is more of a forest than a park, a forest with paths through it, a palace in the middle, (which is now a Museum of Amber) with a small parterre, and a couple of ponds. Large areas of this park are simply trees and bushes. There are apparently all kinds of wildlife there that I did not see, but who probably came out at night, such as deer and wild boar. I did see plenty of birds, and I was so lucky to see a basking snake on a warm stone by the pond. I spotted these grass snakes swimming in the ponds, and once when I was sitting on a bench, one came out of the pond and made its way under the bench where I was sitting, clearly it was unaware of me being there, and continued into the grass and bushes beyond.

Sculpture of Eglė, queen of serpents

Basking želtis, grass snake

The Park is a wonder. Most of the trees are pine, tall and elegant, also tall with spreading branches, curving this way or that, twining with other trees, or leaning away from them. Sometimes just leaning. Or leaning and then straightening up. Or forming shapes like chalices. Some look like Chinese trees, or like the way they are drawn – like layers of rock, straight, one above the other. So many trees and each one is different, unique. 

The parkland of pines and other trees, bushes and flowers, was originally designed and created by the French landscape architect Edouard André at the end of the 19th century. It was restored after WWII. As well as the trees and the palace and the two ponds, it has various modern sculptures. On top of the ‘hill’, a slight rise in the ground which was apparently a settlement many centuries ago, there’s now a red brick church; there are ornate old crosses nearby, an artistic blend of pagan and Christian.

Old crosses, blend of Christian and pagan

There are lots of access paths to the dunes and the sea. In Lithuania, no one is allowed to build next to the sea. That neighbouring protective area is reserved for the graceful pine forests.

Path from the park to the beach

So – who was Birutė, after whom the park is named? 

Sculpture of Birutė in the Park

Birutė was a queen, who lived here, so legend goes, myth mixed with history. She was a real person, born about 1330, near Palanga (and died in 1382). Her husband was Kęstutis Grand Duke of Lithuania, so she was the Grand Duchess. Her eldest son was Vytautas the Great of Lithuania, another important historical figure. (Under his rule Lithuania stretched from Baltic to Black Sea.) 
Birutė, it’s said, was one of the keepers of the flame, priestess of the sacred fire, the eternal fire which was the lynchpin of this area’s religious commitment and practice. The eternal fire, and there is still a lit flame burning by the statue of Birutė  in the park. Somewhat like the vestal virgins, there were young women pledged to keep the fire lit. But Birutė  was chosen by Kęstutis and she left her sacred way of life, and became queen of a people. She seems to have been loved by these people, for she is very much remembered. And she seems too to have slipped from being queen, to goddess. When this happens it often seems to come after the mortal part of the being has disappeared, and it is easier then to acknowledge the immortal energy, the spirit of that person or being. 

But our physical mortal self is not some kind of redundant burden we have to put up with; it too has a place in the garden. I imagine it as a gardener in the service of the Garden.

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I walk though the park every day, morning and evening. I try to catch the twilight but it gets harder and harder as the days stretch out longer. I go out late on the evening of the full moon, but it is still not dark. The moon floats above the trees by the palace, then rises over the pine trees at the edge of the beach.

Night of the full Moon in Birutė Park

 

Most of the old pond is surrounded with stones on the bank and long grasses but at one point the path dips down to almost touch the water and it is veined with hard tree roots and that’s the part I like best, where it is knobbled and uneven and you have to watch your step as it has a downward slope to the pond just inches away from your feet. The greenish water is not inviting. But the ducks and the seagulls seem to find it acceptable. The seagulls float with a pretended indifference, during the day. If someone appears with bread to feed them they squack and squeal into action.

At the new pond I spot fish moving like clouds just beneath the surface of the water. They bunch together then straggle out into lines, threads, gossamer, silk. They seem unperturbed when  a snake, želtis, grass snake we are told, but they are swimmers, they move fluidly through water, when one of them, nose just above the surface glides through their crowd, a little flurry, ripple, splash that's all. The cloud crowd of fish moves slowly then drifts, enjoying the sun, the warmth. Little winks and sparkles on the water surface are their mouths touching the surface now like a constellation in the water sky.

Shoal of fish at the new pond.

New pond lily pads

 

You could see the Garden as symbolic of the whole, integrated Self. Birutė is an interesting case as she started out as devoting her entire life to the divine, the keeping of the flame, but later, came to experience life as a ‘regular mortal’ with all the attachments to survival and to others, to desires and fears, and all the sweetness, the pain, and the transience of materiality. She would not have had this experience of mortality if she had remained one of the vestal attendants. And so it is very likely that she united these two aspects of life, the divine and the earthly, two aspects of herself, which seem to me to be the requirement for Whole Selfhood. Though I suppose one can only really be a goddess after the mortal part has disappeared. 

Perhaps there are many WholeSelf people, walking quietly along the paths, and we come across them every day, souls who have so polished their lives that they are engaged entirely with their purpose. While an enlightened one clearly will have compassion because they see more than we can see, they may not come across in ways that we imagine enlightened ones to be. How would we know how Wholeness might manifest? There will surely be many ways.

The gardeners in Birutė Park work at all hours, unobtrusively. Early this morning I saw one sweeping the paths and he said laba diena and I replied laba diena. They also cut off dead branches from the trees, cut the grass, and tidy the flowerbeds; if you could see how many trees there are in the park, how great the area to be trimmed, how many flowerbeds to be kept free of weeds and dead foliage, you would see how many gardeners are required, moving around like calm, diligent bees.