Pine Needle Barrens

Geography

The Pine Needle Barrens is a large, mountainous region of taiga on the east side of south Equestria. Like the swamps to the west, it has remained mostly uncharted ever since its discovery, and the only geographical knowledge of it was obtained by observation from sky and sea. Summers are mild and sunny, winters are biting and snowy, while spring and fall are the rainy seasons, spring being the warmer. Midyear brings humid mists with the rain, unless quelled by pegasi. Near the central river is the most fertile land, enjoying a few extra degrees of warmth from the winds that blow along the river from the Bone Dry Desert. The only soil in the Barrens equally as fertile is that of a small strand on the northeastern coast. The rest can bear crops, but even a skilled earth pony would struggle to maintain agriculture year-round there. Straying eastward from the river is a sprawling highland dotted with conifer forests and broad plains alike. Mountain ridges snake down into the highlands like claws. Fault lines occasionally give way to cliffs and crevices. Countless streams and distributaries pour from the obscured peaks, giving lakes and waterfalls to the northern reaches. The coasts of the Barrens are lined with hundreds of miles of stony shores. Sheer cliffs of angular basalt columns drop to calm, rocky beaches full of black sand and smooth pebbles. Where there are not beaches, there are sea-cliffs: harrowing hundred-foot plunges unto crashing waves and spearheads of jagged rock. It's said that on a good day, when the sky is a rare clear and the sun lies down for her rest, you can catch the distant shimmer of the Aurora Australis flying impossibly far beyond the ocean.