By onthetrail
Where do you all feel most connected to Tolkien?
17 Jul, 2022
(edited)
2022-7-17 8:40:04 PM UTC
2022-7-17 8:40:04 PM UTC
Dale Nelson wrote:
Onthetrail wrote, "There is a place in the Welsh hills, entirely unconnected to Tolkien movies and whatnot, an oak tree sat just off the river as it comes from the hills around Snowden, a sandstone wall that has been there for generations. There I feel connected to Tolkien because it is where I often took a break on walks and read his books as a teenager."
I'll bet that, though that location isn't associated in your mind with movies made from Tolkien's writings or with specific scenes in his books, it does have some affinity with something in the latter. In other words, your memory of the place is enriched by associations both with the content of what you read and with the time in which you read it.
If that makes sense to anyone else, it would be interesting to hear about such spots of time and place.
I had various places, and still do, that I find certain passages enjoyable.
On that spot in North Wales I always enjoy reading scenes in Rohan, the Fellowship boating along the Anduin, and especially anything from The Silmarillion as the landscape has the textures and colours that I have in my minds eye when reading. Another favourite place of mine is Dinas Bran, in the hills above Llangollen. A simple search on Google will confirm what is particularly wonderful to read up there. Middle-earth is for me made up of so many places in the North West of England and Wales. Especially the North. Cheshire and the open land around Beeston and Peckforton Castles are stunning and very much my Middle-earth. Although not especially Rohan-esq, I still picture them as that whenever I go home.