Ruško Pohorje

The volcanic force built the ancient masses of granite, tonalite, and crystalline slate, which came to the surface in the Lobnica gorge and its tributary Verna. Rock formations and mighty stacks show a “miniature” of the power and beauty of the Alps at the edge of the former Pannonian Sea. The hidden canyon of Lobnica and Verna in the deep gorge of Smolnik, with its peculiar geological composition of the soil and plant cover, has a lot of precipitation, mainly due to frequent storms, which fill the torrents of Lobnica and Verna and streams with such a quantity of water that the drumming and rustling cause fear and the imagination of a “lake”, fairies, and dwarves.

Fairies lived in the fairy-tale castle of Verna. They bathed in the waves of the woods, gardened on the ledges of the walls, grew sedum, fragrant and blue-flowering leather flowers, went to the nearby farmers and gave them good advice, and helped the poor and hard-working shepherds. They also came to the vicinity of Ruše, danced and sunbathed on “God’s Stairway”. They went to the village to see the waterman, whom the Pohorje people call Jezernik. He lived in the Pohorje lakes, in Črno Jezerol, the main source of Lobnica, in Lovrenški Jezerci and the depths of Ribniško Jezero, at the top of the Pohorje. When the waterman with the giant “moustache”, all mushy and dirty all over his body and with fins on his feet, wanted love, he would kidnap a beautiful peasant girl and take her to his castle at the bottom of Ribniško Jezero.

In the Drava gorge below the Falska pečja, according to folk tales, lived the waterman Gestrin, whose daughters hunted handsome boys and plunged them into eddies from rafts.