(Tolkien and) Walking

[Mister_Oy]

Glad you like it

 

[Extollager]

Oh yes! It doesn't strike me as strongly evocative of Tolkien -- maybe more John Buchan! -- but I do like it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

We don't have much in the way of lovely pastoral landscapes around here. The best we get is those special springs when the dull brown fields are suddenly all abloom with wild mustard and other wild flowers . . . which tends to happen after a wet winter, like the one we've just had. It's something I am looking forward to. But we do have parks with woodland paths, and whenever I follow one of those and encounter an ancient tree (any variety) with gnarled and exposed roots, I inevitably think of Old Man Willow.

 

[Extollager]

I've posted this quotation somewhere else here at Chrons, I think, but it belongs here too:

"Humans are not made to sit at computer terminals or travel by aeroplane; destiny intended something different for us. For too long now we have been estranged from the essential, which is the nomadic life: travelling on foot. A distinction must be made between hiking and travelling on foot. In today’s society – though it would be ridiculous to advocate travelling on foot for everyone to every possible destination – I personally would rather do the existentially essential things in my life on foot. If you live in England and your girlfriend is in Sicily, and it is clear that you want to marry her, then you should walk to Sicily to propose. For these things travel by car or aeroplane is not the right thing. The volume and depth and intensity of the world is something that only those on foot will ever experience."

Werner Herzog

Tolkien surely would have appreciated particularly the final sentence.

 

[soulsinging]

I submit that while there are plenty of dramatic incidents in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, they are largely about walking, and my hunch is that reading them at the right time may help people to become walkers, particularly walkers in relatively natural areas, which seems to be a good thing:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/...n-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I think you can test yourself regarding whether Tolkien's writing has helped you to become a walker, simply by asking if, while you are walking, Tolkien/Tolkien's writing is likely to come to mind.

I know that, on one of my walks, when I pass a certain bend in the river, I'm likely to think of Tolkienian things. How about you?

I touched on this in another thread recently. By modern standards, Tolkien is not overly descriptive in that he doesn't fetishize swords, cloaks, coats of arms or mealtime the way subsequent authors do in a neurotic obsession with "world-building" meaning stuffing as many daily humdrum details into the text as possible. However, he DOES spend a lot of time describing the party essentially walking. Essentially the entire second half of Two Towers is just Frodo and Sam hoofing it from the falls to the stairs. I think that's where Tolkien's reputation for slow pacing comes from... it's not overly detailed, it's that so much of the text is descriptions of the scenery or the literal lay of the land (up this crest to reveal that view before plunging down into a valley over there, etc). The result is an epic adventure that sometimes does feel more like a walk in the countryside (though he does a good job of maintaining the tension and pressure mounting as they walk).

I think the results are mixed. It does create some pacing issues... after a thrilling escape from Moria, there are 2 chapters of them walking to Lorien, a chapter of their conversations there, and 2 more chapters of them heading downriver. I've always felt this and the into to Two Towers (3 more chapters of walking across Rohan) to be one of the slowest sections of the book and a real momentum killer between Moria and Helm's Deep.

That said, I think it's a big part of the book's appeal. One of the earlier counterculture movements to start touting this book was the environmental movement, and for good reason. It also opened people up to the notion of "building" an entirely new world (which, as I've alluded to above, has had an overwhelming influence on the genre, perhaps TOO much so) they could literally walk across with the characters.

It's interesting to read right along with the Hobbit, which has slightly less of this due its snappier pacing, and the Silmarillion, which doesn't put you walking with its characters but also similarly spends a lot of time describing the sweep of valleys, rushes of various rivers and formations of mountains in old Beleriand.

 

[soulsinging]

I'll add in response to the actual topic, my wife, kids and dog are all avid walkers and there are a lot of great state parks in this part of Michigan we regularly use, but these deep woods feel more Stephen King than Tolkien.

 

[Extollager]

“There must be a place in the modern world for things which have no power associated with them, things which are not meant to advance someone’s cause, nor to make someone’s fortune, or to assert someone’s will over someone else. There must be room, in other words, for paperweights and fishing rods and penny sweets and leather hammers used as children’s toys. And there must be time for wandering among old churchyards and making the perfect cup of tea and balancing caterpillars on a stick and falling in love. All these things are derided as sentimental and trivial by intellectuals who have no time for them, but they are the things that form the real texture of a life.”

That's from Shelden's biography of Orwell, according to the place where I saw it, but I'm not sure it is Orwell -- I think it is, rather than Shelden. In any event, it seems to be close to a Tolkienian sensibility.

 

[Toby Frost]

I have Shelden's biography somewhere, but off the top of my head it sounds slightly more like Shelden himself than Orwell - it's a bit too neat in name-checking the most important objects in several Orwell books and articles. That said, the sentiment is right.

I've wondered in the past what Orwell would have made of Tolkien. I think on one level he would have considered LOTR to be sentimental and parochial, especially regarding the Shire, but he would have been impressed by Tolkien's love of landscape. I expect the workings of Mordor would have seemed quite familiar after 1984. I think "decent" would have cropped up in reference to Tolkien, which seems to have been one of Orwell's highest compliments.