Adam's Adventures in NZ: and the Order of Peter Jackson

Every noble adventurer needs a symbolic crest
to proudly display, and while on my quest I showed mine
with pride and honor, each symbol representing
part of who I am what I value.

It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

Let's face it -you all know me- I'm a nerd, and what self-respecting nerd could resist checking out the parallels between the works of Peter Jackson and that other guy (JRR Something or other) and the land which I found myself traveling through.  As for my own feet I tried my best to keep them solidly on the road as I continued my journey across New Zealand, however I must admit that for part of the time my head was in the clouds. (And I mean that literally, the cloud cover in New Zealand is so low you can't help but have your head in the clouds at least for a while.) However, when the mist cleared every so often, I would glimpse a world that was almost magical in beauty and in belief, and it was suddenly not hard to find myself embracing my inner-hobbit in a world called Middle-Earth.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

I started my exploration of Middle-Zealand, in the place where most of Tolkien's adventures tend to begin, the Shire. Now, the filming location for the Shire is in a hidden hilly area near the town of Matamata, on a privately owned sheep farm belonging to the Alexander family, on a road called Buckland (seriously). When choosing the location Peter Jackson originally was only looking for a land which had a large tree placed next to a lake. He found it on the Alexander farm, however he also found the rolling landscape and isolated beauty for which to place the rest of the town of Hobbiton. The only way to access the set is to take the guided tour, (which also included a sheep shearing demonstration and the opportunity to bottle-feed lambs). Normally, the Hobbiton set would be mostly gone, with only small wooden white cutouts left in place to represent where hobbit holes and houses had been during filming, but not for my visit. Peter Jackson will soon be filming The Hobbit, in the location and as such the set was restored to full beauty. Not only was the entire town of Hobbiton restored to its perfect movie-like realness, but even the vegetation and other small touches were restored to the set, allowing me a chance to actually walk through and explore a realistic home of Hobbits. Now for legal reasons having to do with the filming of The Hobbit, I must stop my description here, or face litigation. I had to sign a contract promising that I would not reveal anything of what I saw or what I heard while taking the tour. This nondisclosure agreement also means that I cannot put my 1,001 Hobbiton pictures up here or on Facebook for anyone to see (which makes me wonder what is the point of taking pictures if I can't have a profile picture of me standing in front of Bag End?) Happily though, I should be able to tell my loyal readers everything I know about the set and The Hobbit, sometime around 2014, after the release of actual movie...

Mordor and a cloudy Mt. Doom

The next Middle-Zealand location I found myself exploring was Mordor and Mt. Doom, or as they are known in the "real world," Tongariro National Park and Mt. Ngauruhoe. Truthfully, at first I was a little disappointed over the low cloud-cover and misty weather conditions that I was met on the day of my visit as it obscured me vision of the peaks of the great volcano of the Enemy. However, I realized that I don't know if I would have wanted to visit the park in any other type of weather. With the gloomy atmosphere and a sunless sky hanging over my head, I realized that I was getting exactly what I wanted, not a hike through Tongariro National Park, but a hike through Morder. I will spare you my Gollum impression, (Stupid fat hobbit...), which I randomly broke out during the day for no one's entertainment but my own. Thus, I spent my day climbing not over the volcanic rock of Tongariro, but the treacherous black rocks of Mordor, nor was I walking through just any reedy, lifeless marsh, but I found myself carefully picking my way through the Dead Marshes, half expecting to see spectral elf and human faces in the waters staring back at me. Unfortunately the low clouds did cover the peak of Mt. Doom from my vision, but I did spend quite a bit of time watching the clouds as they moved across the face of the volcano, briefly allowing glimpses of the Mt.  Ngauruhoe and satisfying my more dorkish ideas. All I can say is that it was an amazing sight to behold, but just like Frodo I had to be moving on. So I hopped on my giant eagle and headed for my next location.

I ended my exploration of Middle-Zealand and the North Island in the most appropriate place, Wellyland (an idiotic name for the capital of New Zealand's movie making industry), also more commonly known as the city of Wellington. It is Peter Jackson's home town, as well as the location of Weta Workshops, the visual studio responsible for the Lord of the Rings and a hundred other movies, such as The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong. Over 50% of the filming for Lord of the Rings was done in and around Wellington and I took a tour of the city and surrounding areas to see places such as Helms Deep, Rivendell, and the Buckland Forests. We explored some of the filming locations, paused to take foolish pictures, and of course heard stories of filming around New Zealand. For instance, many of the Orcs seen in the movie were portrayed by a regiment of the New Zealand Army (I mean because what better does the New Zealand Army have to do?)

I could have been an elf.

The New Zealand Government basically gave Peter Jackson an open ticket for anything he needed, even so far as making a new governmental position called The Minister of Middle-Earth (I wish I was kidding), whose job was to build roads, declare no-fly zones, and basically be prepared to allow Jackson and his crew to break any law they wished in the name of making this epic trilogy. The entire country of New Zealand was behind this project, in only the way I think Kiwi can be. My favorite story is how when they were filming Helm's Deep, Peter Jackson was short of a few hundred extras and just sent people around to the local hostels and got all these international travelers to come work with him for a few days. The government waived all visa restrictions and allowed Jackson to pay hundred of international backpackers, despite the illegality of it. Basically, the lucky bastards that were selected earned roughly, NZ$150 a day, just to get made up as orcs, elves, or humans, to stand in the background and fight with a sword or bow. (How come nothing like that ever happens to me?)

Yet, despite my inability to be picked as a movie extra for a major blockbuster film, I had an amazing time on my own quest around Middle-Zealand. I drank hot chocolate at the Shire (as well as saw a sheep shearing), tramped through the Dead Marshes to the foot of Mt. Doom, and even posed for picture in Rivendell and visited the Weta Workshop where I got to see all the memorabilia, weapons, armor, and other assorted heroic props from Lord of the Rings, and other movies.

More than anything I think this nerdy little quest of mine has jazzed up my artistic juices and again further strengthened my resolve to not allow my own creative ideas and impulses go to waste. So, just like Sam and Frodo I return from my journey not a man of greater wealth, but a man of greater knowledge and understanding both of the world around me and of myself. I feel as if I did not see Middle-Earth, so much as I saw the possibilities of Middle-Earth, and the possibilities that exist when one trusts in their own ideas and follows their dreams.

All that is gold does not glitter, and not all those who wander are lost.