LOST Tour: Behind the Barracks

Something magical happened during our visit to Camp Erdman. As much as I enjoyed every stop on the tour, it was always abundantly clear that we were simply visiting locations in Oahu which had been used to film the television series LOST. At the crash beach Oahu residents lay on the beach suntanning. At the Temple our tour group stood in line for photo ops. But at Camp Erdman, for a few short but scintillating minutes, I was no longer on Oahu. It was not 2011. I had moved to The Island. I stood in Dharmaville. It was August 15th, 1976.

The cabins at Camp Erdman back onto a short run of grass and trees which then give way to a range of rugged hills. As I made my way back behind the cabins the sounds of Camp Erdman's young residents (and several intrepid LOST fans) was replaced by the rustling of grass and leaves and the soft moan of the wind. I could see no cars, no antennas, nothing that would suggest I was anywhere other than The Island; with no one else in sight, nothing to contradict my status as a newly arrived member of the DHARMA Initiative out for a stroll on a pleasant afternoon. For several minutes I walked along a thin patch of ground between the cabins and the grass, basking in the illusion, imagining that Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Miles, and little Ben were just around the bend. Remarkable.

But back the real world. The areas behind and to the side of the cabins have shown up in several episodes, perhaps most notably in the tense scenes in which Keamy holds Alex at gunpoint in The Shape of Things to Come.

In Follow the Leader we get a Hurley-bird's-eye view of the cabins from slightly higher grassy ground.

From Some Like it Hoth we're treated to a sweet crane shot of the area.

Miles is up to his ass in grass as he pays a final visit to The Barracks in The End.

Sweet, innocent mini-Ben swung with his gal-pal Annie in The Man Behind the Curtain.

And finally, the Some Like it Hoth crane shot treats us to a clear view of the hillside that abuts The Barracks.