The Braslav Lakes are seventy-four lakes and something like a hundred islands, packed into the far northern corner of Belarus. From the shore it is only water and pines, and none of it adds up. The tower on Mayak Hill fixes that. It stands on the neck of land between Snudy and Strusto and lifts you clear of the trees. From up there the district makes sense: lake behind lake behind lake, islands and shallows laid out below you, and the Slobodka towers small and white on the far ridge. The hill is not bedrock. Meltwater piled it into a hole in the dying ice sheet, and when the ice went the heap was left standing.
Slobodka is the other thing you steer by. The village sits on a rise above the water, and its tall white church carries two belfries high enough to be picked out from most of the district. Below it are wooden houses, vegetable plots and a slope running down to the lake. Out on the water you row one of the park's wooden boats between the islands. Mute swans work the reed beds with cygnets strung out behind them, and diving ducks scatter ahead of the bow. At dusk the anglers take the plank jetties pushed out into the reeds, for perch, pike and tench, and the wind drops and the whole lake goes to glass. For a few weeks in June the meadows between the lakes fill with waist-high purple lupine against a wall of pine, and then it is over. In spring, as the ice breaks up, these are the first open water for miles, and ducks, geese and cranes come down on them in thousands. The biggest island, Chaichyn, is loud with gulls and has a lake of its own inside it. Two villages stood out there once, and the families in them made their living from the water. The birds that gave the island its name have it to themselves now.