In '68, when I was 8, my 16 year-old brother, already a Tolkien fanatic, read "Riddles in the Dark" to me one night. I was hooked. I read The Hobbit for myself right away. The first part to really capture my imagination was the windswept wilderness between Hobbiton and the Trollshaws. It was magical to me. Both my brothers had our mother sew cloaks for them, and they walked around in those cloaks and very worn leather boots, smoking long-stemmed pipes with various kinds of pipe-<ahem>-weed in them; the older even made himself a makeshift sword out of aluminum, with rune-marked scabbard. They styled themselves as Rangers, and acted the part. This is what I watched right in front of my nose until 1970-71 when they went off to college. I started LOTR shortly after The Hobbit, but I was still pretty young for it and did not finish until I was 13. Yet having started so young, and having two older brothers who were frankly fanatics about Tolkien, Middle Earth had more to do with my outlook than my parents, my faith, my education, everything. As a result, and being introverted, I was largely shut off from my peers until I finally found others who lived for Middle Earth the way I did (late high school, and in the context of RPG). For a long time I held onto the notion that Middle Earth actually does exist somewhere. I do hug trees. I grieve when I see trees slaughtered for the sake of a new residential development. I am most at peace in the woods, far away from the trappings of civilization. I also love history. Tolkien bred that in me, too. He made it live. I could go on and on...
[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]
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