The approximately 120-mile long (200 km) mountain range that separates the Czech Republic from Germany and Austria is called Šumava, which in Czech means “a noise of trees in the wind,” “dense forest” or “murmuring,” according to folk etymology. But someone forgot to remind the river. The Vydra (“Otter”) pours down the mountains with the noise of an ocean, only unwaving — a constant reminder that sea once shaped this land.

Three million years have passed since Šumava and the neighboring Bohemian Forest belonged to the sea, making her, geologically, one of the oldest mountain ranges in Europe. She has grown egalitarian with age. With average heights of about 2,600 to 4,600 feet (800-1,400 m), the best views are not reserved for scramblers, but are accessible along gentle, well-marked paths.

The Vyšší Brod Monastery, founded in 1259, is situated on the Vltava River in the southernmost part of the Šumava region, approximately 3 miles from the Austrian border.

Arriving in Šumava at all is perhaps the arduous leg of one’s journey. Though its trailhead towns are less than 90 miles (145 km) from the capital Prague, the trip can require up to five hours and multiple bus changes at stops that will be kindly remembered as remote.

I arrived at one such stop in the middle of nowhere 10 minutes too late for one bus and 16 hours and a cold night too early for the next. The last main town was about 12 miles (20 km) up the road, the next one an equal distance in the other direction. “Hospoda je tam,” the driver offered: “There’s the bar.”

The bar hosted only a mother and her small daughter. Within two minutes, the mother had wrested my 40-pound pack onto her own back, and 3-year-old Elishka was leading us across a bridge and into a garage that was really the local hydroelectric power plant. We balanced over planks and pipes and into an apartment off the back. There, Elishka stared from underneath pale eyelashes as Olga, her mother, cozied me into their living room–dining room–office–kitchen with a plate of fruit and cakes, and a cup of tea.

Olga sat and we talked as Elishka hid her face in her mother’s lap. Olga patted her daughter with one hand and her belly with the other: “Cekám.” Elishka would have a new sibling come spring.

Half-an-hour later a man arrived, tall, like Šumava’s sky-scratching spruce. Olga introduced her husband, and we piled into his truck. Where the Vydra meets the Křemelná River cars may go no further, and it is necessary to continue on foot to an inn 2.5 miles (4 km) up. Here I would have bid Olga and her family adieu, were not the very skinny man (bearing my very heavy pack), the pregnant lady and Elishka already hiking.

By the time we arrived, the sun had ducked behind the heavily forested mountains, and we seated ourselves next to a fire to enjoy beer, soup and supper. I was halfway into a potato when Olga’s husband turned to ask when I was born. In March, I sputtered. He meant which year.

“Dvanact-set-osmdesát-čtyři (1284),” I spat, failing to realize I’d just declared myself 722 years old. Olga supplied the correct number — devatenáct (19), not dvanáct (12) — and her husband continued: “So you were five … ”

In 1989 I was five, and then-Czechoslovakia was fed up. In the 40 years leading to the Velvet Revolution — the Czechs’ and Slovaks’ peaceful overthrow of Soviet rule — many attempted escape through these mountains. Some were shot, some shipped to the work camps known as gulag. Few made it safely across Šumava’s barbed-wire collar and into nearby Germany and Austria. For 40 years, these mountains were the Iron Curtain.