The woods behind the fields are guarded by a crumbling stone wall and a maze of pricker bushes with thorns an inch long. It takes a bit of maneuvering to navigate a path, and it’s quite difficult to do with a dog who insists on following you on your adventure. Still, we eventually made it through into the trees’ shadow-filled world.
They instantly reminded me of a favorite book from my younger years, The Lost Years of Merlin, and how the trees have their own language. The wind moaning, branches creaking and shifting…it isn’t hard to imagine them speaking to each other, wondering what intruder has entered their canopy of twisting vines and groping roots.
J.R.R. Tolkien also imagined trees speaking their own tongue in Lord of the Rings. The Ents protected tree-spirits and could speak many languages, but mainly used Quenya and Entish (The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, pg. 156). Many people are familiar with Treebeard (known as Fangorn in the Sindarin language), who roused his fellow Ents to defend Fangorn Forest against Saruman.
Trees are often referenced as wise creatures in literature and movies (think of the recent Avatar)–but why? Is it because of their great age and strong stature? There is a mystery that surrounds trees, in that they are so beautifully alive and yet so confined to live for hundreds, even thousands, of years in one spot. It’s so easy to think of trees having souls, of being aware of their surroundings, even having emotions.
Methuselah, nearly 5,000 years old. A bristlecone pine.
The trees I photographed aren’t thousands of years old, but their character is still obvious, and they are breathtaking. How long have their roots dug deep into the ground? And how much longer will they stand, until some force of nature (or human hand), causes them to fall?
A couple days ago I received my newest copy of The Hobbit, which I purchased off Amazon.com. Amazon is a dangerous site for me to peruse, as there is always a book I want to buy…anyway, I say “newest” copy because this is the fourth version I own. I also have: The Annotated Hobbit, annotated by Douglas A. Anderson, the 1966 edition with its original cover and artwork by Tolkien, and a Houghton Mifflin paperback copy that goes with a Lord of the Rings box set. (By the way, I do not suggest buying the Mifflin paperback copy because it has an unnerving amount of typos. Usually I’m happy with Mifflin’s editions, but not this time).
The Hobbit I just received was published in 1997 and is a handsome hardcover with illustrations by Alan Lee. I have to say, this is a beautiful edition to buy if you would like to own multiple copies of The Hobbit. I’ve been a fan of Alan Lee’s artwork since I purchased his Lord of the Rings Sketchbook years ago, and when I found out he’d illustrated The Hobbit, I decided to give it a go. I’m not disappointed.
I know, nothing can ever replace Tolkien’s own artwork in the original edition. But take a look at Lee’s Gollum:
Note: Colors have been changed a bit to make the picture clearer
Tell me he is not creepy. Though not as creepy as Gollum from the 1977 animated The Hobbit. That gave me nightmares as a child.
Anyway, I admire Lee’s art because it has a roughness to it–it isn’t all perfect lines or extremely bold colors. It has that fairytale quality that I love. And in this edition, there are plenty of pictures to illustrate the scenes. Not so many that it feels like you’re just looking at pictures all of the time, but enough to make you happy to see the work come alive while you read. My one complaint is that there’s no picture of Beorn, whom I love, but alas…you can’t have everything.
I haven’t completely read through this edition, yet, so I don’t know if there are typos…I’m really hoping there aren’t, because it’s so beautiful 🙂
Are there any books of which you own multiple copies?
It takes a bit of maneuvering to navigate a path, and it’s quite difficult to do with a dog who insists on following you on your adventure. Still, we eventually made it through into the trees’ shadow-filled world.
The Junk Drawer 