LOTR: Prancing Pony: Off-topic chat [ Edited ]

[paulgoatallen]

Ahem....I'm back. I've been letting the hair on my feet grow for about a month now so I think I'm ready to immerse myself once again in Middle earth!
Paul

Message Edited by paulgoatallen on 07-17-2008 12:34 AM

[TiggerBear]

(chuckle)Paul, "May the fur on your toes never fall out."

[macross]

Oh my.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Welcome Back, O Gambo Brandybuck!

Things have been getting rather listless around here lately, and we could all use an influx of fresh energy and stimulating ideas...

Even "lorien" - reliably such a "mainstay" on the boards here, seems to have ( temporarily, I assume )

"vanished"...

Ardo  Whortleberry

[paulgoatallen]

---

oldBPLstackdenizen wrote:

Welcome Back, O Gambo Brandybuck!

Things have been getting rather listless around here lately, and we could all use an influx of fresh energy and stimulating ideas...

Even "lorien" - reliably such a "mainstay" on the boards here, seems to have ( temporarily, I assume )

"vanished"...

Ardo  Whortleberry

---

Thanks Ardo – I actually have an interesting (albeit tangential) LOTR topic brewing. I just started reading Stan Nicholls' Orcs, an omnibus edition of his three Orc novels, and it raises a few interesting questions regarding the origins of the "orc" term (which we've already discussed here), the still powerful influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on contemporary fantasy, and where adventure fantasy is headed in the 21st century. I'll unload a massive post when I'm done reading it (it's 700+ pages)! 

As far as things being listless, I've found the summer months – and in particular, summer week days – the time when forum attendance dips the most (aside from right around the winter holidays) so that's not awfully surprising. If you're looking for something to read, I'd suggest Orcs – I just started it but so far I'm really impressed!

[TiggerBear]

Where oh where, did everybody go?

[Dagor]

Hullo, Tiggerbear!

I went off to the mountains... Many decades ago, when few had ever heard of hobbits/ orcs or Gandalfs, I was wandering lost in the high Tetons with a group of misled Explorer scouts. We carried enough food for ten days, but seemed to devour it easily in six. When we finally tumbled from the heights, we were half-starved, thin as hermits and in that strange half-way state that aesthetics try to find so that they may more easily approach a direct confrontation with the awful realm of the numinous. At the lodge bookstore, I plunked down 95 cents for a fantasy venture book, "The Fellowship of the Ring," and, perhaps, preconditioned by my "holy fasting" I was quickly swept away...

Periodically, a return to the mountains refreshes and restores my original experience with Tolkien's writing -- hence, I feel "renewed" today -- so I'll probably be waxing ecstatically here again, be advised! 

[TiggerBear]

Tetons? Where is that?

[Dagor]

RE Tiggerbear -- "Tetons? Where is that?"

Northwest corner of Wyoming, near Yellowstone Natl. Park -- my archetype for the "Misty Mountains." 

[TiggerBear]

And here I am basing them on the Blue Ridge.

That's not a bad question. What local or semi local geographical landscape do you base your own mental image of Tolkien's spots?

[Nadine]

---

TiggerBear wrote:

And here I am basing them on the Blue Ridge.

That's not a bad question. What local or semi local geographical landscape do you base your own mental image of Tolkien's spots?

---

My Misty Mountains would be the Sierra Nevada range (California).

[oldBPLstackden…]

---

Nadine wrote:

---

TiggerBear wrote:

And here I am basing them on the Blue Ridge.

That's not a bad question. What local or semi local geographical landscape do you base your own mental image of Tolkien's spots?

---

My Misty Mountains would be the Sierra Nevada range (California).

---

I believe almost all of my own mental images of Middle-earth environs still revert back to the way I imagined them when I first read the stories themselves, irregardless of anywhere I have actually been to my own life, or have seen in photographs or moving pictures ...

It wasn't until my early twenties that I visited the Sierra Nevada range

 [ & not actually backpacking in the wilderness, but being driven about in an automobile  ]

but I would have to admit, the Sierra Nevada mountains could certainly serve as a "stand-in" for the Misty Mountains

[  although the mountains in New Zealand that were appropriated for use in the movie worked quite well ]...They really are an amazing sight - and so astonishingly tall and majestic, that you feel like you could be on top of the Edge of the World up there...I remember, for one thing [ on my first trip ] staring down into the somewhat scary, vast, bottomless mountainsides looking down the Nevada side...

And Yosemite Valley has some remarkable similarities to Rivendell, although the scale of Yosemite Valley

might seem too much more "grand and spacious" compared to Rivendell...

There are locales in the East Bay Hills here ( and walking paths ) that make me think of the Shire or perhaps just the outskirts of the Shire ( and at least the hillier parts of the Shire )

There is some glade somewhere up in Tilden Park ( which I have not been to in many years ) which put in mind of the spot where Frodo and his companions remained in the company of the Elves [ above

"Woodhall" ] ... ---

Ardo Whortleberry

[Nadine]

---

oldBPLstackdenizen wrote:

---

Nadine wrote:

---

TiggerBear wrote:

And here I am basing them on the Blue Ridge.

That's not a bad question. What local or semi local geographical landscape do you base your own mental image of Tolkien's spots?

---

My Misty Mountains would be the Sierra Nevada range (California).

---

And Yosemite Valley has some remarkable similarities to Rivendell, although the scale of Yosemite Valley

might seem too much more "grand and spacious" compared to Rivendell...

 

Ardo Whortleberry

---

Yes, Yosemite would make a perfect Rivendell with all the waterfalls and it is even located in the right place in relation to the Sierra Nevada/Misty Mountains.

[TiggerBear]

Ah west coasters. The Blue Ridge would be fine as well. We have whole towns nessled within those valleys. And few comunitys, well if they turned off their lights not even a spy satalite could spot them. Not to mention all plants there grow about 10 times their normal growth. Imagine leaves big enough to make shirts with. Morning mist that lasts till mid-day. And always the subtle sound of water; from rivers both above and below ground, streams, creeks, and small waterfalls aplenty.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Good Day To You, TiggerBear ---

Certainly the Blue Ridge Mountains sound very Shire-like and/or Middle-earthian the way you describe them ...

Actually, I wanted to make another submission in this vein of thought, because last time I was sort of trashing around the bush around what I really wanted to say about the subject, and I sort of fudged it all a little bit...

It's all very true those things that I mentioned about the grandeur of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Yosemite Valley and all that...

But the area that I have always more closely associated with Middle-earth is the much humbler environs of the East Bay Area [ although the hills are much shorter than in the "real" mountains ] ---

In Berkeley, where I grew up, looking towards the North, the hills [ whose slopes would be on the "right-hand side" ] sort of slope gradually towards the West, bending around and sort of "cradling" the flood-plain of the "flatlands" below...

It is a similar vista from down South here, in the nether regions of Oakland - [ and gazing North ] where the hills bend around in a similar fashion...

All one has to do is momentarially dismiss [ from the Mind's Eye ] all the freeways, automobiles & trucks & busses, telephone poles, houses & public buildings, & even the airplanes & helicopters flying overhead - & then ( to me ) it all becomes like a "vision" of old Middle-earth itself...

I'm not sure if I could even state specifically WHERE in Middle-earth this is supposed to be -

if pressed, I would have to say it reminds me most, perhaps, of somewhere in the foothills of the

Misty Mountains [ on the western side ] ---

The ideal conditions for catching a "glimpse" of "Middle-earth in the East Bay" is usually on a day in Winter or Spring, & after a good rain, when the skies have been scrubbed clean, the hills are all very green, & there are some white puffy clouds in the sky...

Actually, this is not all that difficult to do, either -

especially as much of the hills here have been preserved from being completely covered over in concrete & development, & many of the houses that are up in the hills are at least hidden by the many trees...

Ardo

[TiggerBear]

(nodding) Indeed everthing looks better after a good clean rain.

Anyone from the midwest on here? If you have no mountains do mountains in literature seem more fantastical to you? 

[oldBPLstackden…]

---

TiggerBear wrote:

(nodding) Indeed everthing looks better after a good clean rain.

Anyone from the midwest on here? If you have no mountains do mountains in literature seem more fantastical to you? 

---

Tigger ---

That is a very intruiging question, & I too, am curious to hear someone's response to that...

Of course, nowadays, most people travel away from home more so than in times past --

[ say, compared to the time when many people might have spent their entire lives within the borders of a single county area ] and objects like mountains might seem to be less exotic to people who live in all-flat places, as almost everyone has seen a mountain ( in person ) at one time or other...

But still, like I said - that is a most interesting question, & I hope we hear from somebody in response to it.

 --- Ardo

[TiggerBear]

Well since fewer than 15 percent of Americans have passports. And most Americans have not traveled more than 3 states outside of their own still in this day. (shrug) How much influence would a one time vacation really have one's perspective? Most Americans only experiance other places from TV. Soo  anyone does not having a nearby ocean make it more magical? Mountains? No forest in Kansas, what do they think of them?

[Nadine]

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TiggerBear wrote:
Well since fewer than 15 percent of Americans have passports. And most Americans have not traveled more than 3 states outside of their own still in this day. (shrug) How much influence would a one time vacation really have one's perspective? Most Americans only experiance other places from TV. Soo  anyone does not having a nearby ocean make it more magical? Mountains? No forest in Kansas, what do they think of them?

---

There is nothing like the experience of seeing these things in person but I think most people have seen them in the media. The only thing that they cannot appreciate is the immensity and grandeur that you experience in person.

[Nadine]

I might add as a post script to this thread that Tolkien himself did not travel very far. I think he took a trip in his youth into the alps and that really impressed him. Yet his geographical world is very diverse. He puts most of his effort into describing the Shire, but he does have the Misty Mountains and the utter desolation of Mordor with its volcano (now where did he ever see that!).