Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold...

 

 

On the way to the utmost south, I found Middle-earth... and Narnia... and the Half-continent too (at least in my own mind). 

I drove out this morning toward the Misty Mountains.  The Kiwis call them The Southern Alps, and they run down the center of the south island.  The pictures really don't do them justice.

Tucked away in the middle of nowhere, in those cold and misty mountains, is a valley, and in the valley lies Mt. Sunday, which I decided I would spend my day seeking.  Mt. Sunday also happens to be Edoras, the place from whence King Theoden rules Rohan in The Lord of the Rings.  It rises 611 meters from the valley floor to the top. 

 
There are dozens of rabbits that make home on the wide and grassy ledge half way up.  It is a fair hike to get up there, especially as the foehn wind off the glaciers to the north are channeled down the valley into a fierce, chilly gust that I guess had to be at least 35 knots. 

This is the view north of Edoras peak. It is a couple miles from there to the dirt road that winds down the valley to this place.

And this is the view to the east.  This is the spine of mountain up which Aragorn and Gandalf would have ridden to get to the gates.

To the south are meres, and home to flocks of little wetland birds.

And this the foreboding northward view. I expect that the clouds are a pretty typical thing from that direction.

And not a one of the pictures does justice to the sweep and the verticality of Mt. Sunday.  Nor to the cold and lonesome beauty that takes your breath.


Not more than twenty miles to the southeast of here, lies another beautiful place, that also served as a location in Narnia.

Though there is still snow here, there were, I am glad to say, NO White Witches.

And here, another view from a distance.

... and from inside the sprawling jumble.









And the castle rock in the middle.  What a place for bouldering!

And then I found something that will ever define the haunted pool in Monsterblood Tattoo, where they hunt the loathsome Slow Saps... don't know that story?  Excellent book by a talented Christian artist from Down Under.  This is the pool in my imagination now...

Again, pictures don't do it justice.  The expanse, surrounded by the snow capped mountains, and the amphitheater of fallen stone circumscribing the pool with it's dark center depth.

I am ready to go down to the Ice whenever the weather clears... but if I have to have a layover, how blessed a place to wait!