Sauron the Great’s Smoky Mountain

"Great Smoky Mountains" has always sounded more to me like a setting in a J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings novel and less like a National Park straddling the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. So when the Rochester Philatelic Association's ROPEX Stamp Show offered a Great Smoky Mountains pictorial postmark, I thought I would present a bit of Middle Earth postal history.

My cover shows a stamp from Mordor with Mount Doom – Sauron the Great's Smoky Mountain – in all its fiery glory. Sauron himself is pictured prominently in the center of the stamp (like tyrants everywhere, he insists that every stamp bears his portrait). Per postal union regulations, the stamp bears the wording "MORDOR", and the stamp is denominated "1" – the currency of Mordor being, of course, the "ring".

The U.S. postage used is a Great Smoky Mountains National Park airmail stamp (Scott C140), and it is cancelled with a ROPEX "Honoring Our National Parks" pictorial postmark dated May 22, 2016.