At Home in the Shire

My favorite world is always the one without me in it. At least not the me that I am. If I don't align with an actual character in the world I'm reading about, I insert myself as an extra. Someone along for the ride but not interacted with. That part is easy enough because it is how I live my real world life.

My first great escape into an alternate world was through J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." I don't even really remember how I got that book. It may have come to me through the bags of books my mother often brought home to me from junk stores, garage sales and fire sales. Whichever way it wound up in my hands, it was a godsend.

I was a misfit. A girl raised predominantly amongst males. I knew little of being female. I challenged any boy, not because I was a feminist championing equality between the sexes, but rather because I resented being discounted as having nothing to offer. But I did and plenty. However, living in isolation in a rural community, interaction with others in summer just didn't happen. That's when reading and imagination became a huge part of my life.

I quested with Bilbo Baggins, the Dwarves and Gandalf. I was a silent companion mired in their adventures. I remembered two old coats given to me in the back of my closet. They had hoods. One black. One red. I didn't have a cloak so one of these coats would have to do. I chose the red one. It resonated as bold and fierce.

It should be embarrassing to say I laid on my bed in the sweltering summer wearing this red coat reading "The Hobbit." Somehow, that single act made me a true member of their party. I was thirteen, young enough to still "play" but old enough to feel shamed if I were caught. Therefore, my bedroom door was always locked so I could indulge in this act of escapism freely without fear of discovery or risk of being taunted.

For me, the words I read transform in my mind into a movie that plays out. I had no idea this doesn't happen for everyone. If I latch to a story though, it happens every time and it will be a certainty that I will voraciously read the book until its end. The world around me literally disappears and I am in another world. I choose the worlds I enter carefully.

Tolkien's world, though fraught with danger, provided a noble calling and purpose. I wanted that feeling. I needed it at age thirteen. I still need it at age sixty-two.

Stepping into those pages, I escaped a life of boredom and anonymity to a place of excitement and worthiness. And I had a horse to ride. Something I wanted all my life and didn't have. But while in Tolkien's world, I had one right along with the rest of my party when they had one.

Ten years later in life when I actually did get my first horse, a young mare, I named her Brandywine. I rode her wearing the red coat. I was twenty-four by that time and still found escape from life's pain through Tolkien's world in "The Hobbit."

All I know is that in my day to day world, I was no one really. I had few friends and none of them considered me their best friend. I accepted that invisible quality about myself. It gave me ears to hear things not actually shared with me directly but openly shared in and around me as though I didn't exist. It also allowed me to notice and see things about others and life in general around me. Being invisible had it's perks. And I took those perks with me on our road to Mordor.

Because I was so very good at listening, I soaked up everything Bilbo, the Dwarves and Gandalf did and said. I pondered it all. I watched for things to come. I was a good companion for them, and they for me. With each adventure along the way, the more I learned about them each and every one, I grew to love them deeply. Truly deeply. They and their world had become as real to me as life itself.

It was exhilarating sneaking through tunnels simply by the dim lit glow of a sword blade. Fighting Orcs and winning. Escaping being lunch for spiders.

As you can imagine, that with my deeply formed attachments for the characters and my joy of the journey with them, the loss of some at journey's end devastated me. It took a good long while of grieving to want to pick up another book. THAT is how real the story and their world had become for me.

To this day, I crave the masterful storyteller that can pull me into a world and fully immerse me the way J.R.R. Tolkien did with "The Hobbit." I confess, though I watched all of the movies and loved them every one, I never finished the "The Lord of the Rings." When the Balrog took Gandalf off the bridge, I was too grief stricken to continue. My young heart could take no more loss of my friends. So, I exited the world of J.R.R. Tokien and I came back home to my ordinary life.

Though other stories have intrigued me, none have ever affected me the way "The Hobbit" did and still does to this day. I only need a hot coffee, a cool crisp fall day, a cloak, and a chance to close my eyes and I am back at home in the Shire.

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I always try to share a different photo of me at the end of my stories so that if you read my stuff often (fingers crossed) you'll get to see the many different facets of me.

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