What does the golden valley in shadowlands symbolise?

Answer 1

The mystery of the Golden Valley in "Shadowlands" is that the Golden Valley and the Shadowland are are one and the same. The Golden Valley is golden until the clouds come and cover it, and then it becomes the Shadowland. Just as our life, our body, is is full of life and health until age, and illness, and sorrow, and loss, and death come.

The Golden Valley symbolizes life, and the health and happiness we enjoy in our lives.

C. S Lewis says

"The happiness then, is worth the pain now"

that in fact we cannot experience one, without the other, because we have to be alive to experience each.

So we brave the Shadowland at the end in order to have our Golden Valley at the beginning, and how fortunate that we have our beautiful Golden Valley when we are young and tender of heart, and can cross the Shadowland when we are older and wiser, and have had the gift of love come to us already to carry us through. And he believed this was God's mercy to us.