Roads Go Ever On

I was 15 years old when first introduced to the irresistible fantasy world depicted in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. My younger sister was actually lucky enough to have a teacher read The Hobbit aloud to her 3rd grade class, and that may have been my first exposure to his works. Soon enough I was reading The Hobbit for myself, followed by The Lord of The Rings trilogy, and over the years I found myself drawn to the stories again and again. At different points in my life I would pick the books up and reread them, each time bonding with the characters a little bit more, gaining new insights into the magic of Middle Earth, the trying to grasp the underlying meaning in the epic battles of Good versus Evil. One of my dreams came true when Peter Jackson turned the trilogy into full length films, with every detail so perfect, as I saw it in my own imagination.

Sprinkled throughout the stories are Tolkien’s poetry and prose, much of which, if not common place, is at least recognizable among fans. Those of you who read my blog have no doubt picked up on the Tolkien-ism in my title, “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost”. I’m certainly not the only one who has gravitated to this sentiment, as I have noticed other traveling folk adopting this as their credo as well.

There was another line from a poem in The Hobbit that kept rattling around my brain when we ended up on the road for an extended period of time, during those times I started to wonder just what it is we were doing…where were we going…where do all these roads go? Initially I couldn’t remember the entire poem, but one line kept repeating itself…the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.  During one particular road trip I shared all this with Dan, and wanted to find the poem in its entirety to better explain what was going through my head. A quick search on the internet revealed that there was the original version from the books, modified versions for the movies, and even songs that had been made from some of the stanzas. As I was relaying all this to Dan, he said he thought the poem would be a great thing to have hanging on a wall somewhere. This gave me the idea to embroider a cross stitch wall-hanging of the words, because once I read the entire poem, the message just resonated with me even more.

The version I ended up stitching is an amalgam of the original poem that began in The Hobbit, was continued and modified in The Trilogy, and was sung in bits and pieces in the movies. These words so perfectly express my feelings of our Life on The Road, and this will hang on the wall of our house from now on – wherever home may be!