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Old 03-21-2004, 11:20 AM   #39
Lyta_Underhill
Haunted Halfling
 
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: an uncounted length of steps--floating between air molecules
Posts: 841
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I always love discussions like this one, and I feel compelled to throw in the fact that I have seen Ents, about six years ago, in a wood outside Atlanta. I wasn't looking for them and it had been about 7 years since I had read LOTR. It had quite faded from my conscious brain at the time and I remember no sparks that would have brought it back to the forefront; but there was no other way I could describe what I saw.

Now I live on 120 acres of woodland and hills, and I hear the trees talk all the time (can't understand them, though). My backyard hackberry used to talk all the time, but unfortunately, it was struck by lightning and high winds and fell in two pieces last year. The cedars in the cemetery are constantly babbling; I am not sure if they're trying to tell me something or not, but I always say "Hi!" when I pass. I'm sure there are those who would pass off tree sounds as the play of wind in swaying branches or the glints in the forest as mere reflections of sunlight, but it is more satisfying to look at them without the filter of rationalization. It is more interesting to leave the analytical functions behind and simply see things without judging them. Why did I judge my visitors to be Ents? Well, I didn't, until I tried to describe them to someone else after the fact. Therein lies one of the eternal problems of Man--how to relate experience in words.

Cheers!
Lyta
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“…she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.”
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