Under Canopy & Earth
It was not long before they grew to hate the forest as heartily as they had hated the tunnels of the goblins, and it seemed to offer even less hope of any ending. But they had to go on and on, long after they were sick for a sight of the sun and of the sky, and longed for the feel of wind on their faces. There was no movement of air down under the forest-roof, and it was everlastingly still and dark and stuffy. Even the dwarves felt it, who were used to tunnelling, and lived at times for long whiles without the light of the sun; but the hobbit, who liked holes to make a house in but not to spend summer days in, felt that he was being slowly suffocated.
For my first seven summers my parents directed a church camp in the Shanendoah Valley of Virginia, so I grew up hiking through the mountains and woods of Virginia and West Virginia. Once we moved to Kansas we went to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and New Mexico nearly every year. I've also traipsed around the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and Georgia a couple of times and the Ozarks in Missouri. My experience and exposure aren't super extensive, but I'm not just talking about Kansas woods here.
I've never encountered the type of forest that Tolkien describes as Mirkwood (and others repeat in their fantasy tales). I've never known the woods to be that dark and spooky. Disorienting perhaps, and seemingly endless, but never the total lack of sun and air and joy that Bilbo and the dwarves encounter. Have I never been in that type of forest before, or is it just a matter of perspective? I guess I bring it up because I have trouble buying into their misery in and hatred of Mirkwood.
I've also never done any caving in my mountain experiences. The way they appear in this and other books, you'd think I'd have stumbled onto at least some. The ones I have seen depicted on TV are rough and random and very hard to negotiate, nothing like the networks of tunnels and glorious caverns that play such a role in fantasy settings. Are there actually underground passages in existence that lead miles and miles from one side of a mountain range to another, or is that just an invention of writers like Tolkien? I've never investigated this topic before, so I truly have no idea.
For my first seven summers my parents directed a church camp in the Shanendoah Valley of Virginia, so I grew up hiking through the mountains and woods of Virginia and West Virginia. Once we moved to Kansas we went to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and New Mexico nearly every year. I've also traipsed around the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and Georgia a couple of times and the Ozarks in Missouri. My experience and exposure aren't super extensive, but I'm not just talking about Kansas woods here.
I've never encountered the type of forest that Tolkien describes as Mirkwood (and others repeat in their fantasy tales). I've never known the woods to be that dark and spooky. Disorienting perhaps, and seemingly endless, but never the total lack of sun and air and joy that Bilbo and the dwarves encounter. Have I never been in that type of forest before, or is it just a matter of perspective? I guess I bring it up because I have trouble buying into their misery in and hatred of Mirkwood.
I've also never done any caving in my mountain experiences. The way they appear in this and other books, you'd think I'd have stumbled onto at least some. The ones I have seen depicted on TV are rough and random and very hard to negotiate, nothing like the networks of tunnels and glorious caverns that play such a role in fantasy settings. Are there actually underground passages in existence that lead miles and miles from one side of a mountain range to another, or is that just an invention of writers like Tolkien? I've never investigated this topic before, so I truly have no idea.
posted by Degolar | 5:34 PM
3 Comments:
There are massive cavern systems, some are man made. Think of mines and the like. Aren't most of the tunnels in Tolkien made by dwarves?
I agree with you about Mirkwood. I've been to a lot of woods as well, and they have never been spooky. Actually, I find Mirkwood quite attractive.
Funny enough, I think Kansas woods tend to be the most spooky of the ones I've been in. Kansas forests are filled with a lot of thorny trees and twisted looking osage orange. Wandering through a Kansas forest as dusk turns to night is a lot of fun; the shadows come alive and the gnarled, mangled trees take on strangely humanoid shapes.
i also agree about Mirkwood. i've been to a few forest areas in the northwest. they did at times seem straight from a fantasy land, but it was Narnia i thought of (at Mt. Baker), not Mirkwood. my spookiest woods experience was outside Yellow Springs, OH, in the "Glen Helen" forest area. it was at night of course, and on occasion one would come across a dark covered bridge or abandoned wooden shed. i went through a cave in AK a couple years ago, and we go in one entrance and exit another, wading through an
...wading through an underground waterway waist-deep in places. without light, it truly was pitch black. couldn't see your hand 2 inches in front of your face. after exit, we hiked downhill for a couple of miles, right on top of the cave we had just explored.
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