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By Suah Cheong, American Forests

Whether I’m lost in a book or glued to the screen, there’s nothing I appreciate more than vivid, well-forged imagery. One of my favorite novels of all time is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. What makes the book so special to me is Ms. Bronte’s meticulous attention to detail; her rich descriptions of the moors and the cold, stormy weather turn the story into a compelling one. Luckily for me, whenever I get a hankering to escape to English countryside, I’m not limited to just reading Wuthering Heights, or watching its film adaption. Given the time and proper resources, I could get on a plane and journey to the very locations that inspired the book.

Here are 5 other fictional places that exist in real life:

The House at Pooh Corner and the Hundred Acre Wood

A. A. Milne’s real life “House at Pooh Corner” was recently put on the market! The gorgeous 9.5-acre property was where the author lived with his family and wrote Winnie the Pooh. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “the estate includes an apple orchard, a summer house, a swimming pool, landscaped gardens and even a statue of Christopher Robin. That’s fitting as the real Christopher Robin, Christopher Robin Milne, once resided in the home, and his stuffed animals served as fodder for his father’s stories in the years after World War I.” The property is also in close proximity to Ashdown Forest — the real-life inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood. The house also has a not-so-fun tie to music history: Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones owned the house in the ’60s, and drowned in the pool!

Hobbiton

J.R.R. Tolkien modeled the Shire after his childhood home of Sarehole, in the U.K. By the time Sir Peter Jackson began scouting for places to film his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Sarehole had since been sucked into the industrialization of nearby Birmingham, and he had to improvise. In 1998, he and his crew came across Alexander farm, a stunning 1,250 acre sheep farm near Matamata in New Zealand. The surrounding areas had no power lines, buildings or roads in sight— a dream come true for the director and producer. The property was eventually opened up to the public after filming finished and you can visit the set today!

The Hogwarts Express

Harry Potter fans, rejoice — you can hop on the actual train used for the Hogwarts Express! Originally opened in 1901, and re-introduced as a scenic route in 1984, The Jacobite steam train runs a total of 41 miles between Fort William and Mallaig. It is considered one of the world’s premier scenic routes. You can also stop by Glen Coe, which was used in multiple Harry Potter films as the set of Hagrid’s hut, and is home to the bridge leading to Hogwarts’ entrance. You can book your train ticket here.

The Overlook Hotel

The haunted Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining was inspired by The Stanley in Estes Park, Colo. When the author and his wife stayed at the hotel for the night, they were mysteriously the only guests in the entire place — King was convinced, however, that they were not truly alone, which moved him to write his famous novel. Read more about the history of The Stanley here. Fans of the Stanley Kubrick film should also consider making a trip to Timberline Lodge in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest. This is where many of the exterior scenes for the film were filmed.

Paradise Falls

Paradise Falls in Pixar’s UP was based on Angel Falls in Venezuela! The Pixar team actually visited the site in person to get a feel for the area before they began animating the film. At the western end of Canaima National Park lies the enormous Auyantepui, or “House of the Devil,” which is home to Angel Falls. Measuring a total of 3,212 feet, and with a single plunge of 2,648 feet, Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall on Earth.

By Doyle Irvin, American Forests

On one afternoon in the mid-1930s, Oxford professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien happened across a mysteriously blank page in one of his students’ exam books, and — moved by who-knows-what, according to the author himself — scrawled down the words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Though this was the first sentence to what he would eventually garden into The Hobbit, which led to The Lord of the Rings, that dusty afternoon falls somewhere in the middle of the story. Part of what made Tolkien’s approach so captivating, and so influential, was his belief that no person is separate from — or above — their respective surroundings and histories.

Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892. He remembered little of South Africa, except for one frightening encounter with a giant hairy spider, as the family moved to England while he was quite young. There, Tolkien moved between the rural hamlet Sarehole, the urban city Birmingham, and King’s Heath.

Railroads in the U.K. Credit: Matt Gibson

Sarehole, and the farmer’s mill he remembered most fondly, can be directly understood as the fictional Shire — whereas his family home in King’s Heath hugged busy railroad tracks. Tolkien was orphaned at the age of 12, and in his writings about the Shire we can see him longing for the idyll of Sarehole, gentle parental guidance, and a cooperative community on even terms with each other — such things he unknowingly embraced before life darkly complicated itself.

The young orphan found refuge in Catholicism, as Father Francis from his church looked after him and organized his schooling. He fell in love with a non-Catholic woman named Edith Bratt and eventually was sent to the Somme during World War I. In a trench in France he began the first stories that became the legendarium (the background histories of Middle Earth).

Tolkien, 24 years old at the time of the Somme, served as a communications liaison between officers in the field, using flares, signals, pigeons, runners and telephones to relay messages. On the first night of the assault, 19,240 British soldiers were slain. Nearly 1.5 million lay dead by the end of the offensive. Of his club from school, the “Tea Club, Barrovian Society,” all but Tolkien and one other friend would be killed in action.

How did Tolkien react to all of this? He came to think that industrialization — and machines by proxy — only serves to create different classes of people, with some invariably above, and others by happenstance below. He believed that what inevitably follows this stratification is conflict corresponding to the scale of that divide: Those with the power will use it, and those without will want it.

Serviceman Tolkien in 1916. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

He was sent back to the U.K. to convalesce after contracting trench fever. While healing, he and Edith visited the nearby Roos woods, where she danced for him — a moment he remembered for the rest of his life and immortalized in his legendarium as the tales of Beren and Lúthien, a mortal man and immortal elf who were star-crossed. Thus in nature he found refuge from the wastes of industrialization.

Tolkien’s Catholicism proved significant in his relationship with Edith. Her family originally disapproved of the union, as did Father Francis. Tolkien struggled with supposedly not being good enough for Edith; in this struggle we see Aragorn and Arwen — outcasts in their adopted societies, mired by confusion, death and war, trying to do right by both their country and by their love.

Perhaps most importantly, Tolkien acknowledged that no one is perfect. No mortal, not even Frodo, can totally resist The Ring. Similarly, no human can extinguish the allure of glory, triumph — and celebrity. The struggle between power and grace exists in every heart.

Equally important, however, was the belief that it only takes one person to make a difference. That that person can be anyone, no matter how big or small. That nobody volunteers to do what’s necessary because they want to; they do it because they can’t imagine the alternative.

When you take all of these elements into consideration — the unprecedented mechanical destruction in the form of World War I, causing death at an unbelievable scale; the loss of innocence that comes with being sent from one’s childhood home, and the permanent parting from one’s childhood friends; the finding of refuge in a forbidden lover’s arms, surrounded by the nature whose shelling one has just witnessed; the confusion about what it was all for and what it all meant — when you take all that into consideration, it’s easy to see why the counterculture movements of the 60s and 70s, responsible for the rise of environmentalism, so easily transposed The Lord of the Rings’ fictional representations of these very real biographic events onto what was happening at the time.

Frodo carried the Ring to Mordor. In 1971, a group of activists sailed for the nuclear exclusion zone in Amchitka, with a copy of The Lord of the Rings aboard their boat — The Greenpeace. Thus the international organization was born. They are but one example of the real-world impact of Tolkien on environmentalism, which we examine in Part Two of this blog. Stay tuned.

By Suah Cheong, American Forests

Nothing clears my head like a little time spent in nature, but unfortunately I don’t always have the time or resources to make it happen. In such cases, I go for the next best option: reading books with vivid nature imagery. I may not be bunking in a cabin with Thoreau, but reading about the cool, crisp air and the crystal clear ponds in Walden, I can’t help but picture myself in the woods.

Here are 5 great reads that you should feed your inner adventurer:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

In April 1992, recent college graduate Christopher Johnson McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska, abandoning his family and possessions and instead just bringing himself. In doing so, he felt free to take in the raw, unfiltered experiences of nature. Four months later, his body was discovered by a moose hunter. This novel follows his thrilling journey into the wild until his eventual death.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Twenty-two-year-old Cheryl Strayed has lost everything from her mother to her family to her marriage. A few years later, with nothing more to lose, she makes the impulsive decision to hike alone to Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert all the way to Washington State. An inexperienced hiker, she is guided only by her determination to heal herself and put the pieces of her life back together. Both the physical and emotional obstacles in her journey help her discover new parts of herself.

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

In this book, Peter Wohlleben uses his passion for forests to explain the amazing processes of life and death that he has observed in trees over the years. Just like our families, tree parents support and communicate with their children, sharing nutrients with them when they are sick and protecting them from the impacts of extreme heat or cold. Consequently, trees that belong to a family or a community are protected and can live to be very old. Wohlleben also compares these trees to solitary trees, which live much tougher lives. This interesting read gives new life to nature and trees, forcing you to consider them from fresh perspectives.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson has just returned to the U.S. after spending twenty years in Britain. He decides to reacquaint himself with the land by walking the Appalachian Trail, which measures 2,100 miles. During his trip, he reflects on his own life, makes new observations about human relationships, and takes in all that nature has to offer. This comedic yet wise story is sure to immerse you in nature.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Years ago, a group of dwarves inhabited a mountain, using their mining skills to dig for gold. But as their pile of treasure grew larger, it caught the attention of an evil dragon, Smaug, who stole it away from them. This classic novel tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, who joins legendary wizard Gandalf and the dwarves to take back their stolen treasure. The group is presented with countless tests of strength and character, making for an exhilarating story.

**Come back on Thursday to read Doyle Irvin’s first post in a three-part series on J. R. R. Tolkien!

Find out the latest in forest news in this week’s Forest Digest!

Credit: The Cookiemonster/Flickr

• May the Fourth be With You — National Geographic
  New species of tiny ‘Forest Goblins’ have been found in Indonesia, and they look surprisingly like Yoda. Tarsius spectrumgurskyae are night dwelling primates that live in the dwindling forests of Sulawesi. Tarsiers are known for their distinctive mating calls and massive eyes — each eye is as big as their brains — and for their owl-like head-swiveling abilities
• Global warming is reshaping the world’s forests — Deutsche Welle
  Trees are migrating — albeit slowly — to adapt to changing temperatures. In Canada, insect infestations are exponentially increasing, deforesting entire regions while they are at it. Swiss forests have been shown to be more susceptible to fire. What’s next?
• How scientists made better ‘bio oil’ from trees killed by beetles — Futurity.org
  In this New York Times article, learn about a unique plant species that blankets forest floors– the wood anemone. Wood anemone grow in dense, circular colonies reaching up to 12 feet in diameter and can contain hundreds of individual stems.
• A new kind of street tree grows in Newton — Boston Globe
  Newton, a suburb of Boston, once sported as many as 40,000 urban trees in its canopy. Since then, climate change, invasive species, disease, pollution and salt have reduced that to less than half of its original number. The city has decided not to go down without a fight, however, and is coming back with a comprehensive plan to reforest their city — for now and for the future.
• The technology behind growing trees — The News-Review (Oregon)
  The forestry industry is bringing advanced technology to the practice of growing trees. Read about how nursery improvements, genetic testing, seedling viability, aerial drones, radar experiments and more are reshaping the face of forests, maximizing positive environmental impact.

Lindsey Miller-Voss recently came to American Forests as our new social media manager. She brings her passion for conservation and raising public awareness to our team — learn more about Lindsey!

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