Yeah, the sheer size of Middle Earth is hitting home. It take longer to get from the Shire to Rivendell than it does to drive from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston (a bit less than 300 miles; 4.5 hours). Mind you, DFW-Houston is less than half the longest dimension of Texas (773 mi wide, 790 miles long).
*looks up webpage* Rivendell to Lothlorien - 462 miles. Shire to Rivendell - 458. So to go from the Shire to Lothlorien is to walk across Texas from Beaumont on the eastern border, past El Paso on the western border, and some distance into New Mexico. Wow.
or you could be Ernest Shackleton sailing in an open boat with a couple of boxes of matches to heat your bouillon cubes, through Antarctic pack ice from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, which is 800 miles. I just can't get my head around it. (and when they land they have to do a 36-hour non-stop trek over uncharted glacier to get to civilization). Middle Earth is made up, but people REALLY DO these crazy things when they have to. It's not impossible.
I worked for a summer at a small museum in Wyoming on the Oregon Trail, so read a lot about the pioneers who made the trek from St Joseph, Mississippi and parts east to Oregon and California in the west. 1500 miles, walking beside their wagons most of the way, averaging 15 miles a day, with their full families and all of their worldy goods.
The Mormons walked from St Joseph to Utah pushing handcarts across rough terrain, which I'd never known about until that summer.
We were at a major crossing point over the Platte River - the telegraph wire came through there and so did the Pony Express during the short time it ran. (And Oscar Wilde stayed a night there! He said the food was dire.) We were not too far north of Independence Rock, which is a huge rock formation. It got its name because if you made it there by Independence Day, July 4th, you knew that you wouldn't get snowed in on the mountain passes in the Rockies.
Heh. I can get started on that and ramble on for ages. XD
There are some really nifty spots in the terrain where you can still see traces. I took one day to drive down some old dirt roads which ran along the Trail for a few miles (basically from Casper, where I was, to Independence Rock) and in some areas you could still see traces of the ruts the wagons made in the earth. The land there is marginal, so it doesn't grow much grass and bakes hard in the sun (which is why the ranches have to be huge, to support the cattle. It's also overgrazed, I suspect, which contributes to the problem).
There's also an area near Independence Rock, where the wagons had to go down some rock formations at pretty steep angles, and the ruts are worn into the rock about 2 feet deep. When I was there, some idiot was standing near me and complaining to his girlfriend and asking why the pioneers just didn't go around. I refrained from pointing out that if they could go around they would have - I think the area was some bluffs overlooking a creek or river.
My boss at the museum told me that in Oregon there were some 45 degree inclines they had to take the wagons down, which they did with the aid of ropes tied to trees, and you can still see the scars in the trees today.
And Independence Rock is full of graffiti from the time. XD
http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/trailsdemo/ has lots of info about ruts in the landscape and the various stops through Wyoming. I worked at Fort Caspar in the city of Casper, WY. (the guy it was named after spelled it Caspar, but the city changed the spelling sometime between then and now.)
It was named after a young officer, Caspar Collins - Fort Collins, Colorado was named for his dad - lost his life in a skirmish with Indians who were attacking a supply train nearby in revenge for the slaughter of an entire Indian settlement a couple of months previously by soldiers. Caspar wasn't even stationed at the Platte Bridge Station (as it was known at the time), but all of the officers at the station refused to go to the aid of the supply train, so he went even though he could have refused.
we went on a family trip out to the Colorado River Valley near Moab, Utah, once. I remember thinking that the countryside there was just such an utter moonscape, completely alien, and wondering what on earth would keep you going. There was a Victorian house there which is now a hotel, in the one acre of green in all this martian landscape, where some early settler's wife had absolutely refused to go any further. I was fairly boggled by this trip, too.
* I think I need to work out the scale and then superimpose a map of Middle Earth on a map of Eurasia to get a real sense of scale. Not that I've got a good sense of scale in Europe and Asia, but I think Middle Earth may be way wider than North America.
Actually, eyeballing the map of New Mexico (which is only 342 miles wide), and where El Paso is (basically drawing a line straight north from El Paso neatly bisects New Mexico), I think walking from Beaumont in the east, along Interstate 10 to El Paso, and then through New Mexico to the border of Arizona is equivalent to walking from the Shire to Lothlorien.
I have this strange image of you serenly cycling past (possibly ringing one of those kids bike bells to warn everyone you're passing through) as the nazgul attempt not to be swept downriver. :D
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these updates are really giving me some sense of distance, though, which I never had before.
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Yeah, the sheer size of Middle Earth is hitting home. It take longer to get from the Shire to Rivendell than it does to drive from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston (a bit less than 300 miles; 4.5 hours). Mind you, DFW-Houston is less than half the longest dimension of Texas (773 mi wide, 790 miles long).
*looks up webpage* Rivendell to Lothlorien - 462 miles. Shire to Rivendell - 458. So to go from the Shire to Lothlorien is to walk across Texas from Beaumont on the eastern border, past El Paso on the western border, and some distance into New Mexico. Wow.
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The Mormons walked from St Joseph to Utah pushing handcarts across rough terrain, which I'd never known about until that summer.
We were at a major crossing point over the Platte River - the telegraph wire came through there and so did the Pony Express during the short time it ran. (And Oscar Wilde stayed a night there! He said the food was dire.) We were not too far north of Independence Rock, which is a huge rock formation. It got its name because if you made it there by Independence Day, July 4th, you knew that you wouldn't get snowed in on the mountain passes in the Rockies.
Heh. I can get started on that and ramble on for ages. XD
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There's also an area near Independence Rock, where the wagons had to go down some rock formations at pretty steep angles, and the ruts are worn into the rock about 2 feet deep. When I was there, some idiot was standing near me and complaining to his girlfriend and asking why the pioneers just didn't go around. I refrained from pointing out that if they could go around they would have - I think the area was some bluffs overlooking a creek or river.
My boss at the museum told me that in Oregon there were some 45 degree inclines they had to take the wagons down, which they did with the aid of ropes tied to trees, and you can still see the scars in the trees today.
And Independence Rock is full of graffiti from the time. XD
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It was named after a young officer, Caspar Collins - Fort Collins, Colorado was named for his dad - lost his life in a skirmish with Indians who were attacking a supply train nearby in revenge for the slaughter of an entire Indian settlement a couple of months previously by soldiers. Caspar wasn't even stationed at the Platte Bridge Station (as it was known at the time), but all of the officers at the station refused to go to the aid of the supply train, so he went even though he could have refused.
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Possibly of interest as far as Middle Earth vs. Europe goes ...
(From Strange Maps)
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