[Bêthberry]

The pretty leaves of Lothlorien were but pretty leaves for me, until...

I stood at a kitchen sink and looked out the window one grey pewter day in November. I was waiting for the inescapable and inevitable to happen, the death of someone dear to me. And it was to come soon, four days later. And I was visiting one last time but one my childhood home, which I could never then visit again.

As I looked out I saw the white, peeling bark of a silver birch tree, with golden oranges leaves, dead but still hanging on the branches, limbs and twigs, fluttering forlornly in the breeze. They would not fall until spring. I had never recognised that about this tree, but it had happened year in and year out. The leaves turned colour in the autumn but did not fall until spring.

I realised how very closely Tolkien observed the natural world, that he could take a specific characteristic of a real species of tree and give to it the characteristics of faerie. Lothlorien called to me then as it never had before.