above the clouds

The view out the small plane window was largely unremarkable as we reached cruising altitude above the foothills of the Wellington region, the southernmost reach of New Zealand’s north island. The aerial view of the Rimutaka Range, the low mountains that force the country’s capital city to hug the Pacific coastline, would likely have been stunning on that late winter morning. There may have been a few last traces of snow present on the first day of August, or perhaps the first hints of the prickly, yellow gorse bushes that would begin to cover the hillsides in spring. Both of these views – and any others in between – were made impossible, however, by the thick, low clouds that had settled right at the base of the Rimutakas. Crossing my fingers and hoping for clearer skies later, I settled for watching fat droplets of water condense outside the thick window pane as the New Zealand landscape slipped by beneath a soggy grey blanket.

Fortune must have been looking favorably upon me that morning, however, because the skies began to clear the further north we flew. By the time our Boeing 737 began its descent toward Auckland, dazzling rays of sunlight were piercing the wispy clouds, and the ground as far as I could see had been transformed into a rolling sea of green beneath our wings. It was hard to believe that less than an hour before I had been fighting for control of my umbrella with a strong Wellington southerly and its horizontal rain.

I craned my neck, straining to see if I could pick out the sheep that dotted the green hills or the coast that I knew couldn’t be very far away. We passed briefly through one last trace of a low cloud, and, bursting through the other side, were greeted by a stunning swath of deepest green stretching all the way to the sea. My mind immediately wandered to a line from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, describing when the hobbit Frodo first sees Valinor, the elves’ Undying Lands. Tolkien wrote that, “the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.” For a moment, I felt as if I, too, was looking upon some eternal green land; Middle-Earth.