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Damnit. I’m a hobbit.

I have a ten-year-old who at times is obsessed by the Lord Of The Rings. If he shows up for his visit in jerkin and cloak, I know it’s a Tolkien weekend. One of our activities is what we call ranger training, where we go into the wild (actually a small public woods on the edge of town), and work on our ranger skills. We’ve yet to encounter orcs, but it does give one a bit of a chance to study up on finding one’s way back to the car, how to avoid falling in creeks, and to survive frigid temperatures for up to an hour or two at a time.

To be honest, I’ve done this since I first read Tolkien back in high school in the seventies, and at this very woods for much of the time. I’ve often thought I would have made a good ranger, grim-faced, stoicly braving the wind, the cold, the sun, the elements, moving stealthily and keeping an eye on the forces of evil. Besides, I look damned good in a cloak.

It was one day last summer, we were driving to the recycling center outside of town when it struck me, I wasn’t a ranger. I was a hobbit.

It was a beautiful day, one which a several mile hike through woods and fields, over streams and hill would have been a great time. But I wanted to get home so I could work in my garden. We had been discussing which flowers to plant you see, and I was kind of excited by the prospect. I was also in dire need of a cup of tea, and a bit of lunch sounded good as well.

All hobbit qualities.

I tried to list my ranger characteristics mentally, the cloak thing, my grim expression which I’ve perfected over the years and I’m pretty good at finding my way in strange places (GPS is quite helpful in this). But I’m also drawn to maps and it’s probably from that where I picked up those skills. Again, a quality of a hobbit.

Once home I happen to catch my reflection in the mirror and noted with alarm, the bulging waistline. If I had any doubts, they were squashed then. Looking in my closet I noticed I rather extensive collection of waistcoats, at least for the average American male. With relief I noticed my feet were of a normal size, and far from leathery soled.

Not that there is anything wrong with being hobbitish. But facts are facts. Aragorn is sexier than Bilbo. Perhaps ranger training would result in a more svelte me, which would be a good thing as I’m far too tall to make a decent hobbit. So many decisions, so many choices.

Oh bother. It would be a nice day to follow a stream and see where it goes, but I believe I’ll have a nap, then putter about in the garden.

Image taken at Uplands Farm, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York

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So the works of Tolkien and other fantasy writers have never been one of the more manly of pursuits, I’ll grant you that. Peter Jackson’s film version of The Lord of The Rings toughened the image up a bit, and I worry that when his take on the Hobbit hits the screens, it will receive the same treatment.

This is understandable in the twenty-first century, as we demand out movies heavier on action than whimsy. Even in a treatment as long as the Lord Of The Rings – which spanned three films and was expanded even more in the Director’s Cut available on DVD – there is little room for the kind of details that you find in the books. We don’t see into the minds of the characters, but instead see only the action.

According to Tolkien, “hobbits are inclined to be fat in the stomach”, a charge which could once be levelled at Peter Jackson as well, though he seems to have slimmed down considerably over the years. Certainly, Frodo and the other hobbits of the fellowship had not come of age yet at the time that the Lord Of The Rings is set, but in the film version, they show no signs of even leaning towards overweight. Samwise excluded of course. And there is very little bumbling involved, even when going from comfortable hobbit holes to surviving in the wild. Merry and Pippin come across more like high school potheads than hobbits, with a somewhat more affirmative attitude towards reckless excitement than in the books.

So when you strip a book to action and plot, modernize the characters so we can recognize ourselves, you end up losing things of importance.

I’ll go ahead and say it, as anyone who seems to see the movies without reading the books point out – “are Sam and Frodo gay or what?”

We get our feathers ruffled at that question because we understand the relationship, because the books provide something that the movies fail to capture – the narrative. Part of Tolkien’s genius is in his narrative, which lightens the tone considerably, and especially so in The Hobbit. Whimsy is an integral element of being a hobbit, the pleasure of living a gentle life. It’s a rural life, as opposed to an urban one, and we have very little connection these days to the types of rural lives idealized in the books, particularly here in America. We seem to have lost the concept of whimsy in agricultural life sometime between Washington Irving and the dust bowl. One might argue that in the antebellum period of the south, a form of gentility and whimsy is still present. But even there, the movement today is to force those thoughts from our heads, as it wasn’t that way for all – particularly slaves – and precisely because the element of slavery is so inherently evil, there should be no romanticizing the period.

Of course the same can be said for nearly any period through history, because we are after all, human. And humans can really suck when it comes down to it.

Tolkien’s work was a product of his time and place, when at least for some, there was a gentility to life which rarely exists today. We don’t understand the concept of bachelorhood for instance, where it’s possibly to not be publicly affiliated with a member of the opposite sex, show no interest in things carnal, and have close friends of the same sex to which you feel genuine affection. Without that understanding, it’s easy to be confused by the relationship between Sam and Frodo, Merry and Pippin, and even Legolas and Gimli, though their war-like attitudes somewhat tempers their relationship. We can’t understand a life in which our circumstances can preclude the ability to support a wife and children, and lack of inexpensive and reliable birth control means regular sex will likely land you in precisely that situation.

It seems inconceivable in the 21st century that people might lead a life without sex. What you need to keep in mind is that in many, if not most parts of the world in the early 20th century, and certainly in the world of Middle Earth, temptation wasn’t as strong. Try to imaging if you will, going a full day without some reference to all things bawdy being made. Without it being in your face all the time, your mind was free to think other things.

And let’s be honest, there are those who see the adverts for Tolkien film adaptations, see wizards, hobbits, elves and dwarves and pronounce it gay without even seeing the relationship between Samwise and Frodo. Ergo, anyone interested in The Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit must be a bit light in the loafers as well. Fascinated by Alice in Wonderland? Pedophile. In fact, I would venture a guess that there are more people alive right now who believe Lewis Carroll to be a pedophile, than who have read his books, let alone anything that takes a serious look at the issue.

We live in a world of action and plot, and we don’t have time for narrative. But it’s the narrator’s voice which gives understanding to the nuances of stories, and without that knowledge, there can be no enlightenment.

Image taken at Garden of the Gods, Shawnee Forest, southern Illinois

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Tolkien brought me to a love of the forest. I suppose it was there all along, after all we learn about the magic of the forest from fairy and folk tales. The lucky ones amongst us at least.

But for me it faded when I realized that these tales were just that, tales. In reality the forest can be dirty, dank and terribly easy to get lost within. Now I didn’t despise the forest, and in fact those times when I found myself as a kid on a woodsy trail, I was quite happy. But it wasn’t something I sought out. The whole boy scout concept of wilderness survival didn’t appeal to me.

Then came Tolkien and the great middle earth forests – Mirkwood, Lothlórien, Fangorn and others, and the magic came back. It’s the richness of Tolkien’s vision and the power of his prose that makes his tales, and the magic contained therein believable. And we learn to see the forest as a character, as distinct from other stands of trees as people are from each other.

I’m often amazed at how even a small stand of trees can envelop you in a way that nothing else can. The light is different, the sounds, the scent. It’s quieter in a forest, or rather the outside world is quieter, and when its sounds do intrude, they seem more lonesome somehow.

I think it’s important to find magic in the world today, especially for children. Those of us who grew up believing in folk tales and legends had something larger than ourselves to believe in. It’s hard to grow too egotistical when you believe that you could be incinerated by a dragon or cooked into a stew by an old witch in the woods. Even though the big, bad wolf came to a bad end, you still had the feeling that Granny wasn’t his first victim.

It’s my belief though I don’t have the statistics to prove it, that when people lost their belief in folk tales and legends, their belief in religion slipped as well. Suddenly there was nothing larger than ourselves, and so the quest became to be the largest, most successful person you could be. Clawing our way to the top, we became the big, bad wolf ourselves, fangs and all. And when we stopped believing that the Earth was governed by invisible agents, which we could never conquer, the Earth became plunder as well. Starting it seems, with the forests. Not only are there no spirits of the Earth to protect it from us, it has no spirit itself. And therefore, with the right technology and even bigger machines, we can build it to our will. It’s not thought of as our host, but as our resource.

But all resources are finite, and I have no doubt that should we choose to, we will eventually wear it out till life can no longer be sustained as we know it. As humans, unfortunately it appears to be our nature.

But it’s also my belief that we were right to believe in the spirits of the forest and the Earth. I don’t think we’ll have a chance to do too much damage, before the planet turns on us and puts us back in our place.

After all, remember the ents.

(image taken at Caumsett State Historic Park, Lloyd Neck, Huntington, New York

A Hobbit’s Path. Click to view larger or order prints

I’d never be one to deny the greatness of the Lord of the Rings, but for me, I love the simplicity of the Hobbit. Hobbits are by nature of course, rather small. And though in many respects, the Hobbit is a big book, dealing with some large themes, it keeps its sense of whimsy intact. I lost track of how many times I’ve read Tolkien’s book, but eventually I had it down where I could knock it off on a long afternoon. We set off with Bilbo on his adventure, where the road goes ever on. And it’s in the innocence of the wandering hobbit that my mind connects most with. When following a trail through the forest, and especially when the forest opens into a sunny meadow full of all things green and growing, it’s easy to feel hobbitish. And very nice indeed.

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Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea:
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar,
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit