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It almost seems as if at this point Tolkien is thinking of Fangorn as an otherworldly place similar to Lorien; In Lorientime may move differently to the outside world, in Fangorn it is space[/i] that follows different laws. Or perhaps just as the Elves perceptions affect their understanding of time, the Ents perceptions affect their understanding of distance. Perhaps the Ents are more complex beings than may at first appear.
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Is distance in Fangorn similar to a 'country mile', i.e. much more than a mile, or is it a concept which is lost in such a strange and magical place? This is interesting, as in Lorien, the peculiar concept of time is similar to that in the underworld - people being taken there may spend just a day, or so they think, when they have really spent seven years there. In Fangorn, maybe there is no set pattern to distance and space, and after all, such things are only a human construct to 'help' us fathom the world out. Maybe those trees move about so much that distance becomes irrelevant - who hasn't found themselves lost in a woodland and had the distinct feeling that the tress are somehow conspiring to make us lost?
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If the Entwives refused to speak to the plants & trees it could only be because they did not want, or need, to hear their stories. And that being the case, what, really, would Ents & Entwives have in common? The very stories the Ents lived to tell would be an irritation to the Entwives. And the ‘stories’ the Entwives wished to tell would have been empty & felt ‘contrived’ to the ents. Neither Ents nor Entwives had any desire to hear what the other had to say. A classic breakdown of communication - grounds for separation in anyone’s book .....
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Sometimes I think that a parallel could be drawn with the coming of agriculture to this world. At one time there was a vast 'wildwood' covering all of Britain, even right across our moors and mountains, and we humans lived as hunter gatherers there. But then came agriculture and the ordering and taming of the land, just as the Entwives did in Middle Earth. And the wildwood became an entirely separate entity (sorry...) to the tamed landscape. Neither side of our landscape would have anything worth saying to the other side; the woods must be kept trimmed back and the fields must be sprayed with pesticides and kept in order. Perhaps we have forced our own wildwood in to the situation of that of the ents. In Sherwood Forest there is an oak tree so old and immense it must be supported by props, and I wonder what tales that tree could tell; there are certainly many legends surrounding it.
And then what happens to trees for commercial reasons? They are cut down and in the rings we really can read the story of the times those trees have lived through - we can work out what years were dry, which were wet, which years the tree suffered damage. But when we read those tales it is too late, and that tree is alas dead, and will never tell any more stories of our times or anyone else's.