How Tolkein Created Middle Earth

Six days ago I entered British Columbia. Well, actually I entered the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, but it looked more like the Pacific Northwest than any part of North Carolina or Tenessee that I have ever seen. The smokies encompasses 70 miles of the Appalachian trail, a section of ridge top walking that straddles the NC/TN line between Cherokee and Gaitlinburg. At high elevations you spend much of your time walking above the clouds. The ridges are covered in hemlocks and red firs that pierce the sky like the emerald spires of Oz. The ground below is green as well, covered by a wide range of mosses and lichens that are supported by the drifting mist. On a clear day the views are phenomenal. After long sections walking through the darkness underneath the boughs the trail will cut across high out croppings of rock and you can see sharp ridges spreading out, like the rib cage of some giant beast. The mountains here are steeper, the weather unpredictable and the wildlife is more diverse than anywhere else in the United States. 

For years I have read and re read the works of Tolkein and Lewis and it has baffled me how they created worlds of their own. What sort of genius does it require to develop a world, fully equipped with creatures, races, cities and even a heaven that is all it's own? As we descended a steep mountinside and the shadows of late afternoon began to lengthen I started to see alterations in the terrain around me. Distance and darkness turned trees into turrets, mountains became citadels and stumps and discarded rabble became stooping creatures and people. 

In this hour of shifting shapes I quickly realized that Middle Earh was not conceived from a writer's desk. Tolkein must have spent days in the wilderness of Brittian, where his imagination could run free. It didn't take superior wit to create it, granted it probably helped a lot, it just took a wilderness and the changing shadows to realize that there is more than one way to see things. The smokies are a harsh place, and very different from the landscapes that I am familiar with, but one look at a shadowy cliff side and a world of my own began to form. It is in these wild places that we let our imagination free, and it is in these places that we create worlds beyond our own and because of this we should do everything we can to preserve these rough ridges and sheltered valleys. With a wilderness and some shifting shadows Middle Earth, Narnia and Charn begin to form.

Chastan