Middle Earth has captivated me for 35 years. Like millions of other fans, I’ve devoured the The Lord of the Rings saga by J.R.R. Tolkien, but I’ve also enjoyed the author’s lesser known short stories, “Smith of Wooten Major,” “Leaf by Niggle,” “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” and “Farmer Giles of Ham.” These minor works combine wry observations concerning human character and community with a clear sense of moral purpose, creating a world where duty and perseverance count as much, or more, than individual talent. These short tales critique the selfish tendencies that Tolkien observed in English society of the mid-20th century, and which have reached rampant proportions in America at the dawn of the 21st.
I can remember the exact time and place I first read Lord of the Rings, lying on cushions (we had no chairs) on the floor of my small student apartment in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England — home to the best brown ale on this earth (and probably Middle Earth as well), and a mercurial soccer team that I diligently support to this day. It was autumn of 1968, and I’d bought the trilogy on the advice of a friend without knowing much about it. Within an hour I was sucked into Tolkien’s universe, and I finished all three novels in a sleepless 36-hour marathon, aided by a variety of artificial stimulants. For the next 15 years I re-read the books each autumn, reveling in the quintessentially English atmosphere of the Shire and its adjacent lands, and awed by the far-flung realms of Rivendell, Rohan, and Gondor.
Many times I would walk in the deep woods and the high moors near my home in Devon, where strict planning controls had ensured the preservation of great tracts of lonely countryside. On the high tors of Dartmoor I would contemplate prehistoric sacred stones and imagine the bleak and threatening character of the spirit-laden burial chambers on the Barrow Downs. Dense woods in the valleys became the eerie Old Forest, or Fangorn, or even, in parts where the trees were particularly huge, the elvish Lorien. In these homegrown places, it was easy to connect with Tolkien’s sense of the English countryside as the inspiration for many of his settings.
I took for granted the convenient accessibility of these natural worlds on my doorstep, sometimes within an hour’s walking distance in a pair of sturdy boots. The front door to my house opened directly onto one of the town’s main streets, but from the end of my garden, green fields sloped uphill, still divided by drystone walls into the long, narrow patterns set out by the original Saxon settlers who cleared the forests in the year 660 AD. A walk up the hill, over the first ridge, across a valley and over another ridge transported me into a rich landscape that could conjure many moods. It was a perfect place to interpret Tolkien’s tales.
I returned to my old house in the small town of Ashburton (“the town on the river of the ash trees” in old Saxon) this last summer. The fields and their stone walls were unaltered. The urban bustle of the street was the same, the buildings unchanged except for new repairs and coats of paint. The whole town is what’s known in England as a “conservation area” — like Charlotte’s historic districts but with strong legal teeth — and special permission is required to alter dwellings or business premises. Demolition is rare, and carefully sited new buildings are built to high standards. In this way the beauty and character of the historic town is maintained both as an economic development tool (thousands of visitors each year pump money into local businesses) and as part of the nation’s heritage.
My Ashburton house was rebuilt in 1795 after a disastrous fire that destroyed many of the town’s timber-framed buildings from earlier times, and I took my turn at caring for the 18th century stone and stucco that replaced the medieval posts and beams. Owning a piece of history, even a modest slice like my old row house, comes with a duty of care. Many possessed it before me, and others after me. This depth of history breeds a sense of property rights and responsibilities markedly different from the self-focused mentality that dominates American attitudes about owning land and buildings.
My love of Middle Earth hibernated during sojourns in sweaty Mississippi and barren Oklahoma, and a further decade dominated by Charlotte’s raucous suburban sprawl. Then came the first episode of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy. Sitting in a cinema in Little Rock, Arkansas, I was transported in an instant from Middle America to Middle Earth. Such is the lasting power of Tolkien’s tales to span generations, cultures and oceans. They mock our society’s transient values, and like all great mythologies, remind us of imaginary places that embody real truths.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2004.
