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Pre-Dawn Musings

Writer's picture: Pru WarrenPru Warren

Oct 23 (Wednesday)—middle of the night

 


Perhaps you were aware that all those Lord of the Rings movies were filmed in New Zealand. That is, you’d know it if you were a nerd, like me.

 

Those movies should have been subsidized by the New Zealand Tourist Council because they are hour after hour (after hour after hour) of cheesecake shots of STUNNING country. If they had one of those drinking games where you had to take a shot every time a scene of spectacular beauty flowed across the screen, the entire world would have died of alcohol poisoning before the third movie came out.

 

One of my favorite scenes (it’s EVERYONE’S favorite scene, I suspect) is when Gandalf sends Pippin up the immense pyre to light the beacon fire in the city of Icthelion. The camera is looking up at Pippin bravely throwing a lamp onto dry wood, so we can see when guards at the second beacon—WAY up on top of that mountain over there—have noticed the fire and lit their own pyre. A flare of vivid orange blossoms where once there was only forbidding rock.

 

Then, in a series of aerial shots, we the viewer watch as beacon fires are lit in a chain across the mountain ranges. One after another, Gandalf’s fire erupts into stark landscapes. Over clouds. Across vast distances. The daisy chain of beacons does what it’s supposed to do, stretching in moments all the way to where Aragorn lingers gracefully on the steps looking particularly attractive. (It's his full-time occupation.) He sees the beacon fire and rises to run into the hall. “Gondor calls for aid!” he shouts. There’s a tense pause while the king thinks it out.

 

“And Rohan will answer the call!”

 

Then they all ride out to be slaughtered by huge flying worms and massive elephaunts and hideous orcs throwing boulders around and that part is less satisfying…but that breath-taking journey across the mountains will make a viewer like me gasp and think “I gotta go to New Zealand!”

 

I bring up this scene because the National Geographic Orion is heading for Aukland. We’re motoring industriously along the coast of NZ’s North Island and I cannot see a danged thing out my rain-soaked window EXCEPT there’s a lighthouse out there, its powerful light reflecting off low-hanging clouds.

 

And there’s a second lighthouse down the way. In fact, the beams of their two lights ALMOST meet in the middle.

 

When I woke up at one in the morning, there was blackness... and lighthouses. As far as I could peer in either direction, there were penumbras of light forming a wall—a daisy chain of sorts—to identify the coastline to passing ships.

 

And now I've awoken again. It's almost four in the morning and the daisy chain is STILL going on. I can see the last lighthouse we passed…and the lighthouse we’re passing. When I lean into the window, I can see the fan of light from the next one up ahead.

 

And apparently this has been going on for hours. Probably all night.

 

A fence. A wall. A network dedicated to keeping ships from crashing on the rocks. At the far northern end, wise and wrinkled Gandalf at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds calls for aid. At the other end of the chain, in Aukland (I assume), the king of Rohan answers the call.

 

It’s just so NEW ZEALAND. I love it!

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