Discover New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth
	The sand that we expected to see on the beaches at Parth Galen, if any, has all been washed away by the action of the Nen Hithoel as it narrows and gains speed, roaring toward the Falls at Rauros. The remaining beach is smooth, water polished gravel, and is a hard enough surface that it forms a natural roadway along the lake essentially from just above the Argonath to the rocky North Stair, bypassing the Falls. There is a natural pathway that leads up to Amon Hen.
	The pathway to the peak of Amon Hen, the Hill of Seeing, naturally leads one up the slopes of the hill. It is said that there used to be stone stairs here, but we found only thick, tussocky grass, capped by a huge, wide, flat stone. Boromir is said to have leaped over the stone, but I think it was as one leaps over a field, for the stone is much too large even for Boromir to jump over. From the top of it one can see clear across the Nen Hithoel to Amon Lhaw on the far bank.
	The left photo shows the tip of Tol Brandir with the tall peak of Amon Lhaw, the Hill of Hearing, and the Falls just to the right. The Right photo shows the North Stair, the portage way around the falls. It twists and turns to reduce the pitch of the roadway and allow the easier carrying of heavy loads. It is now loosely packed and obviously disused, and a small stream of water spills out from the Nen Hithoel and runs along its length to the Anduin below.
	Leaving the Nen Hithoel, we followed the paths of the remaining Fellowship, minus the hobbits, north westward into the brown lands of Rohan. There are two steep, parallel ridges here, running north and south, with a small stream between that flows away from the Nen Hithoel toward the Entwash. One can see from the top of the ridges out across the wide flat plain of East Emnet, where Legolas saw the vast company of orcs. From the plain itself, the ridges look dark and menacing.
	The fields of Rohan are probably much greener most of the year, but we were there in winter, when the rainfall is sparse and the land is dry. The broad, hard plain is good horse country, and for most of the four days it took them to cover 135 miles, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli found it not too hard going. Here and there are spurs of bushes and small, stunted trees fed by water that lingers in little gullies that run toward the Entwash.
	The land rises here, swelling up toward the humps of the East Emnet Downs. The ground becomes harder and the grass shorter and more sparse. There are few hills here, and none of them green, at this time of year at least, but there is one that stands out from all the rest that may have been (at that time) the "green hill" where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli camped on the night before they had their meeting with Eomer and the Riders of Rohan.
	As one approaches Fangorn Forest the ground becomes a little more hilly until it reaches the Downs, where the three met and surprised the Riders of Rohan. This was a natural meeting place, for the riders, going north, were constrained while chasing the orc company by the marshy ground of the Entwash on their left, and the more difficult terrain of the Downs on their right. No doubt this slowed down the orcs, too, and allowed the riders to overtake and destroy them.
	The windy uplands of the Wold of Rohan, on the left, stretch off northward and eastward toward the River Limlight. The river marks the Edge of Rohan; the Fellowship had passed it almost two weeks before on their trip down the Anduin. The photo on the right shows the marshy land between the Downs and the Entwash, which stretches about ten miles to the river. The Deeping Stream, and perhaps other unnamed streams, flow into the Entwash in this area.
	From the Downs one can see Fangorn Forest stretching like a carpet of trees over the rolling plains of the Wolds. It must have been very difficult for Aragorn to find tracks here, and only the most experienced of trackers would have been able to find them at all. The rolling, folded ground provided a tactical advantage to riders on horseback against the orcs, for it slowed the normally swift but clumsy orcs considerably, while it hindered the riders almost not at all.
	The Entwash here is a slowly moving stream that flows out of Fangorn into the marshy area where it is joined by the Deeping Stream. The photographs look essentially south and southwest, toward Edoras and the White Mountains in the extreme distance. Small groups of people on foot can traverse this area, if they are careful, but is no place for a large company, such as that of the orcs, and horses are likely to become completely bogged down in the soggy ground.
	Even though we didn't find any obvious mound, it didn't take us long to find the place where the Rohirrim overtook and killed the orcs and burned their bodies. Here and there one can still find the ape-like orc skulls sticking out of the grass, the tops of some of them weathered and bleaching in the waning sunlight. We didn't find any other bones, or too many dead branches or logs, but perhaps the firewood has all been gathered by others before us.
	I believe this is the exact spot where Merry and Pippin got free from the orcs and made their way into Fangorn Forest. The trees are very close here, and it would have been easy for them to have been hidden from the orcs and Rohirrim after going into it only a few yards. At right is the Entwash where it flows out of the forest. The east bank is bright and cheerful, while the west bank is dark and forbidding, the edge of the great brooding presence of the forest.
	We were surprised to find frost forming on the grass at night, since it didn't seem that cold, even though it was winter. Perhaps the chill one feels near Fangorn is not just a psychological perception due to the darkness of the forest itself, but an actual physical condition caused by a natural phenomenon unique to the topography of this vast land. In any case, with the sun going down and the brown Wolds behind us, we decided to camp under the eves of Fangorn Forest.
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