After shopping and sight-seeing in Everlook (try the snow peas!), if you’re anything like me you desperately need a break from goblins and goblinkind. Fortunately, unlike Azshara, Winterspring is still largely wild and offers a great supply of silence and peacefulness away from the bustle of the town.

Relative peacefulness – we’re still in Kalimdor, after all, where even the sunniest pasture is mandated by divine law to contain at least four rabid, territorial top-predators. Does everything want to eat you over in the Eastern Kingdoms? Perhaps I shall find out one day.

A cobbled road goes west from Everlook towards the famous hot springs, but on the way I take a detour north to Starfall, having been advised by a reader that I will not be spitted by the resident elves. Along the way I impulsively plunge off the track into a broad, gently-inclined basin covered in deep, ancient-seeming snowfall and dotted with ferocious bears. I inform the bears that I have decided to refer to these deep gullies as “snowrroyos” because even though “arroysnows” rhymes better it is not euphonious. But then I begin to suspect that some of them might recognize my outfit as having previously belonged to their Uncle Gladpaws. I would ask them, but despite public confusion regarding our mutual trades, shamans – unlike druids – cannot talk to bears. Or date them, hurr hurr.

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Good lord I’ve been sick. Also, my thesis committee are expecting a full product on Monday. So that’s going to be a good laugh for all of us. There will be an update soon. In a side note, thank you very kindly to the reader who reminded the Sunday Funnies of the journal’s existence. Really, […]

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So let me tell you something you might not know about Winterspring: it’s pretty cold.

It’s not as cold as Icecrown, thank goodness. The sheltered valleys and abundant tree-cover break the force of the wind, and the great soft heaps of snow everywhere do something to insulate the place. It’s a quiet, civilized sort of freezing. Still, it is called Winterspring for a reason, and particularly if you’re just coming down from the burning (or magically-temperate) reaches of Hyjal, It can be a shock to your system.

My first few days in Everlook are troubled by the difference between my usual travelling garb, and the continuing mysteries of goblin hospitality. How can they be so keen to make a gold coin off of the slimmest of opportunities, sharpening their considerable intellects on the grindstone of profit, and yet have never had the thought cross their mind that some people are bigger than they are. So they establish nice cozy hotels in out of the way places just perfect for a hunting trip – filled with goblin-sized beds, goblin-sized chairs at goblin-sized trestle tables, and most uncomfortable – goblin-sized latrines out back.

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