Raefindel:
Aha! Now I can relate. Many thanks for the explanation of your walking tour and upcoming visit. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Three weeks ago, I played host to an internet friend from way back named Argo, a fellow X-Files fan with a mild-to-moderate interest in Tolkien.
Picked Argo up from the hotel, telling her I would give her a guided tour through Amon Hen and Fangorn Forest (at a park called Happy Days) and The Old Forest (at Ira Rd., the scene of the tornado).
As we strode up the slope towards the Seat of Power, Argo smiled bemused when I told her she'd soon recognize the landscape as that of Amon Hen. Well, she smiled until she saw the Seat of Power at the top of the rise, looking so eerily similar to the one in Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring" movie that she literally stopped in her tracks, did a double-take, and exclaimed: "Wow! Looks like they transplanted New Zealand here!"
(Note about the Seat of Power at Happy Days: It's made of brick sides and concrete pavement on top, crumbling and slightly overgrown with grass and moss.)
"You mean Middle Earth," I replied.
Roughly a half-mile later, on loosely clutched boulders grasped by ancient tree-roots appearing about to spring forth and walk at any moment, against a backdrop of ledges 320 million years old from the Paleozoic era, Argo was similarly duly impressed by Fangorn. Especially before the sun came out from behind the clouds, the darkness of the day added to the dense, close atmosphere of the brooding old woods gone treeish.
What about Mt. Rainier reminds you or strikes you personally regarding Caradhras? And what IS Caradhras like in springtime without all that SNOW? * grins *
Gandalf the Grey
[ May 17, 2003: Message edited by: Gandalf_theGrey ]
|