The trees, for some reason, only get really talkative around me when I'm coming back late from some shady shindig.

Hardy har har.

Actually, I seriously do believe that the trees are able to communicate, and have moods, just like any other living beings. The Druids must have had something right.

Or maybe I really am that shady in combination with having read a lot of Tolkien.

Southern Ents would sound like, "Hoom hom! I ain't gonna be hasty...turn round, I want a look at y'all. Hey, y'all sho' 'nuff look like orc young'uns to me!"

This is kind of a wierd topic to me, but it reminded me of something I read about the Lord's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.

Ahhhh...sweet oblivion to the real world. How I love it. And dread when I must return to my non-existant "life".

When I feel this way I too often remember Puddleglum's words:
The play-world does lick the real world hollow, and the made-up things do seem so much more important than the real things...

How can you miss something you've never seen? I do so long for Elves, and it's another of Lewis' arguments that God wouldn't have made us with a longing that can't be fulfilled.

Personally, I've resently decided that elves are angels. And in one of Paul's episle's he says that people have entertained, like given food and/or lodging to, angels without knowing it.

I still cling to the hope that someday I'll see my elf. Who knows, maybe my guardian angel has pointy ears...

One time I was wondering around a patch of trees near my house and came upon a hole through some bushes that looked so magical, so entrancing. My heart started beating harder. I tried so hard to stifle the hope that it was some gateway to Middle-earth. Obviously, since I'm writing this it didn't work, but still...
...Still round the corner there may wait a hidden door or secret gate
And though I pass them by today tomorrow I may come this way
And take the hidden pathes that run West of the Moon, East of the Sun...

Exactly Elianna! You hit the nail on the head! Since we apparently *can't* have a world with elves, hobbits, etc., might as well imagine it. And I'd rather have those imaginings than real life any day. Although I'm still holding out for a secret passageway myself :rolleyes:

Up!
 

Here's a little something with which to stir this pot..... ;)

"Better Clear it with the Elves First"

What do you make of that, doubters? :smokin:

Seems perfectly rational to me. I've seen a few Elves (or Faeries) myself, at least one of which I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of.

Still, theres no harm in them...... (as we're traditionally supposed to say)

Thanks for upping this thread, lmp! Interesting article... now feel like I want to visit Iceland.

It's interesting to see that a lot of us do believe in things we can't explain or even see. Sometimes I see things out of the corner of my eye -- this might be the product of an overactive imagination, but I don't think so.

I saw a Boggart in my house not very long ago. He was crouching on the top of a set of shelves in the bedroom as I approached the door. He saw me and quickly slipped down to the floor and went to hide. He was only little, probably only two foot tall, and was a skinny, old looking little Boggart, who seemed harmless, and I didn't feel surprised to see him there.

There was one of the creatures near my parents' house, possibly homeless as his old house had been knocked down. This was a half-timbered hall where my Grandmother was a servant; she said every night the Boggart used to fill up any buckets left out by the well.

The oddest thing I experienced, which had little to do with creatures or beings from the underworld, was that as my grandfather died, he knocked on the window of my parents' house, which he had been born in. My father was with him as he died, and when we later told him about the knock on the window he calmly said that it was Grandad, and that it always happened when somebody died in the family. :eek:

<-- Never prune this tree!
 

Today I arrived home and there were some workmen for a tree-service there, the kind that prunes the trees for you or (gasp) removes them. There was an odd breeze stirring and shaking up the branches of the trees as I got out of the car, and I got the distinct feeling that they were very displeased...

Poor trees! They must have thought they were going to get chopped down.

Did you hear anything along the lines of "Down with the tree killer!"?

I will confess that when I have to prune branches on our two trees, I try to reassure them that they will feel much better without a lot of smaller branches to get broken in storms.

Btw, I enjoyed the first line of your last post, Encaitare! It gave me a mental picture of jean-clad workmen trying to explain to Undomiel & Elessar that they have a work order to trim up the White Tree. :)

Once I have been in a camping trip in the mountains and there was one night when the sky was literally covered with stars and there was more silver up there than blue. I had a strange feeling then, as if I had become aware of something being there with us, someting ancient and wise. The feeling lasted only a few seconds and I have totally forgotten about it, until today, when I started reading this thread. Now that may have been only my imaginaton-it runs a little wild, sometimes ;)-but-who knows?- I might have felt the last of the Firstborn near me.