the shire

“I’m doing this the right way,” Josh, our Californicated classmate, announced in the midst of peeling off one of his socks five minutes later, after we hopped out of the van. He straightened, socks in hand, and tossed his California-sun-bleached hair, flashing a straight-toothed smile that would have put the stars of the Crest White Strips commercials to shame. Vic just chuckled, eyeing Josh’s bare feet.

“Your feet don’t have enough hair,” Melinda observed, pointing at one of Josh’s relatively hair-free feet.

“He may after today,” Vic said, chuckling again as he zipped his coat up to his chin, making him look rather like a turtle peeking out of its shell. I didn’t blame him. Already, the biting wind was tearing straight through my scarf and jacket. Looking around at the other girls as they shrunk down in their winter coats and donned their wooly gloves, I could tell they were feeling the same way.

After ensuring that we were all bundled up accordingly, we began following Vic and Alec down the slick side of a hill, trying our best not to slip. Josh squished along through the mud and sheep droppings alike, perhaps slightly more at risk than the rest of us as the glop oozed up between his toes.

Thanks to the downed tree, our entrance into Hobbiton took place from above, rather than from below, as is usually the case. We were all slightly taken aback when, suddenly, we crested the hill to find Hobbiton sprawled out at our feet. Tucked into the hillsides below us were seventeen white-washed facades with perfectly round holes cut into them where windows and doors would have been on normal house fronts. They would have undoubtedly looked curious to someone unfamiliar with Frodo and his quest to destroy the One Ring, but the six of us at the top of the hill, steeped in Tolkien lore as we were, knew exactly what they were: hobbit holes.

Beyond the hobbit holes, 1,250 acres of rolling farmland stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted here and there with gnarled, non-native pines and waddling wooly sheep.

Despite Alec’s urging for us to hurry down the hill so we could start our tour at the bottom, our progress was sluggish due to the amount of photos being taken. Una, with her bulky camera slung around her neck and her fiery-red hair whipping around in the brisk wind, was moving two steps per minute, at most. The rest of the Hobbiton first-timers weren’t much further ahead of her.

I sidled up alongside Denise once we had made our way halfway down the hill. She was crouched down in the muck, framing a photo of Bag End – Bilbo and Frodo’s home – as it loomed above us from its perch on the highest point of the hill.

“What do you think?”

“There are, basically, no words,” she said in her characteristic Valley-Girl-from-Vermont vernacular. She stood to examine the digital picture she’d just snapped, grinning, her cheeks and ears rosy from the wind. “I’m so jazzed right now; I kind of can’t believe I’m here!”

We followed Vic and Alec down the winding gravel path that led through the center of Hobbiton, pausing to peer into a darkened doorway every now and then. The doors don’t actually lead anywhere – the hobbit holes are nothing more than flat wooden facades pressed into the grass, after all – but that didn’t stop us from imagining round hallways with soft dirt floors leading off under the hills.

Alec stopped us just shy of the end of the gravel path, in front of a small, bare hill.

“You may not be able to recognize it now,” he said, indicating the hill in front of us, “but this is where Sam and Rosie’s hole sat at the end of ‘Return of the King.’ It was the last hobbit hole you saw in the trilogy.” A few people snapped photos. Later, I found myself wondering if they would feel silly explaining those photos of a bare hill to family and friends back home. But, in that moment, taking a photo of a bare hill seemed to make perfect sense.

“That’s what it looked like during filming,” Alec said, pointing to a photo board standing conveniently behind us. On it was a large picture of the hobbit hole complete with red door, garden and grassy roof – an image familiar to every one of us. The picture, we were told, along with about a dozen others, was given to the Alexanders by New Line as a gift after filming. During principal filming, cameras (other than the cinematic sort, of course) were forbidden on the property. Consequently, these behind-the-scenes photos are some of the only ones in existence that fans ever get the chance to see. Again, flashes went off.

“The owners are actually petitioning New Line to allow us to rebuild this hobbit hole, since they let us refurbish all the others,” Alec continued, referring to the new white-washed wood adorning all seventeen hobbit holes. “Though, if the rumors are true, they may be back here rebuilding it themselves soon enough.” He didn’t say any more, but six sets of eyes glanced over at Vic and six sets of lips curved up in knowing smiles.