Climbing with John Howe
Jan 2003
I'm standing in a field with John Howe, a Tolkien artist featured on the Fellowship of the Rings movie. Only he looks somewhat Asian, rather like Kenneth, a Chinese photographer friend of mine. It's a grassy field with a paddock fence around it. He tels me that we're oin the south side of Hong Kong Island, somewhere near Tai Tam reservoir. We've both got cameras.
"Professor Tolkien grew up around here", he says, "he got the vision for Mordor based on the rocks."
"Rocks?", say I.
He leads me over to the side of the field. We're actually on a tiny flat piece of ground with precipitous rocks crashing down into darkness on all sides. The rocks are sharp and triangular like fangs. It looks like the Teeth of Mordor.
We move around the rockscape, taking pictures. John/Kenneth seems to get around easily, while I'm struggling.