In Which Kat and Destiny Simply Walk into Mordor

In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit. It may surprise (and gratify) some of you to know that Hobbiton is indeed a place. Better still, it is actually situated among miles of pristine farmland, with the hazy outline of mountains on the horizon (though, unlike in a certain movie, the mountains are located in the east, not west). There is a “Party Tree,” a mill and pub beside the pond, and most importantly, under a hill and beneath a huge oak, there is a hobbit-hole with a green door.

We’ve been there.

Over the past six months, we have traversed the lands of Middle Earth. For those of you Lord of the Rings nerds who feel the need to live vicariously: read on. (For the sake of an epic narrative, events are arranged in the order Tolkien described them and not in the order we experienced them.)

After departing the Shire, we fell down a bank that proved to be a shortcut—to mushrooms! However, while we were still in ecstasy over finding said mushrooms, Destiny suddenly felt the approach of something dark and sinister (despite the glorious sunshine on Mount Victoria). She warned us to get off the road. We hid as best we could, given that the tree roots shown in the film weren’t actually there for us to hide beneath. Shivering together in our terror, we listened as the hooves of the Ring-Wraith’s horse grew steadily nearer. Thankfully, he passed us by, and we began a mad dash through the woods toward safety. At one point, we looked back and saw, on the ridge, the silhouette of the terrifying horse and rider (not actually pictured—we couldn’t find a horse).

We made it to the Prancing Pony (well, not really, but it kind of looked like it) where we had a cup of tea, pretended to smoke a pipe (sunglasses), and would have sent off a post card had the post shop been a functioning office rather than a historical landmark.

Meanwhile, we simultaneously paced the gardens of Isengard, staves in hand, discussing our serious concerns over the fate of Middle Earth. Our discussion ended with an off-script wizard lightening battle.

Returning to our flight from the Nazgul, we realized we were still not safe. The villains continued to hound us to the Ford of Bruinen where we stood in the rushing waters and shouted out to the undead kings, “If you want him, come and claim him!” Unfortunately, the river did not flood on command, but as we did not have a dying hobbit in our arms, the Nazgul opted not to follow.

Thus, without a dying hobbit but with a great deal of excitement, we made our way to Rivendell. The actual city evaded our elven eyes, but there was plenty of grass and wildflowers. There was a lot of discussion about what to do next, including the admonition that one does not simply walk into Mordor, to which we replied, “Challenge accepted.”

What followed is a series of events that occurred in unreachable mountain passes and inaccessible movie sets. The next point of interest was on a mountainside outside Moria, where we propped a timed camera on a car and mourned the loss of Gandalf. (Featuring: Esther Stuart as the stoic Legolas, Clare Thomson as Boromir, and Destiny and Kat as Merry and Pippin.)

After the loss of our good friend, who we knew would be busy battling fire demons and whatnot for the rest of the film, we decided to skip to the part with the River Anduin. We were sadly missing boats and cloaks and elven bread, but the waters were peaceful and beautiful. (Imagine our surprise when we discovered the River Anduin is actually two different rivers! Don’t worry: we visited both.) Along the way, we got a view of the towering cliff faces where the Argonath (Pillars of the Kings) watch over the river pass (they were on a break in this photo).

(At some point in here, we visited the Weta Cave, where they made the props for the films, and said “’sup” to Gollem.)

After some running about central Otago, where the grassy rolling hills are spotted with large boulders, we reached Edoras, capitol of Rohan and home to the Golden Hall. Sadly, the hall and city are no longer on the hill, but we did have a picnic on the spot where the hall would have been.

A fair number of battles ensued, which we opted not to join, though we did stand on a ledge and survey the encamped soldiers below. Instead of fighting, we chose to set our course for Mount Doom and—yep, that’s right— we simply walked into Mordor.

Ok, so to be fair, there was a little bit more involved. In order to simply walk into Mordor, we first had to get a bus at the unrighteous hour of 5:30 a.m. Unfortunately, the bus did not show up on Friday (though we were outside in the cold waiting for it), pushing our epic journey to Saturday. The bus took us two hours from the city of Taupo, around a rather large lake, to the beginning of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. From there, we climbed something called the Devil’s Staircase, which could be imagined to look something like the stairs Frodo, Sam, and Gollem climb in The Return of the King (just less steep and less slippery and generally less terrifying). Our climb brought us to the foot of Mount Doom, which we had been told by our bus driver not to climb as there wasn’t enough daylight for us to climb it and complete the crossing. So, we trekked up to the Red Crater, passed the Emerald Lakes, skirted Blue Lake, and hiked a road that seemed to go ever on through a native forest before reaching the end of the trail.

Thus ended our sojourn through Middle Earth. (Can you imagine what it would have been like if we’d walked the entire way? One of us might have died!)