What if Tom Bombadil had written The Lord of the Rings?

On rewilding Tolkien

I’ve been working the last few months on a project related to J R R Tolkien’s groundbreaking fantasy masterpiece. Tolkien is beloved by legions of readers—and sneered at by some—for devoting so much of his story to detailed, loving, even exalted passages about trees. Not to mention flowers and weather and hills and various bodies of water. You either love this kind of thing, it seems, or you loathe it. I’ve been cherishing Tolkien’s digressions on trees for decades now.

I think it safe to say that editors these days would take one look at Tolkien’s rich evocation of setting and reject his manuscript without further ado. Readers apparently don’t want this sort of detail anymore. They want action, battles, monsters, and magic “systems.”¹ That’s what sells, right? Today’s fantasy writers wouldn’t dare waste a reader’s time with foliage.

As a result, most of the contemporary fantasy novels I’ve read (not a lot of them, to be honest, because they depress me) barely acknowledge that their characters exist in a living, breathing world. Setting is nothing more than perfunctory backdrop to the action. For me, the hugely popular door-stopping tomes crowding the fantasy shelves these days convey an attitude towards nature that reflects the very substance they’re made of: it’s all just dead processed wood. I turn their dessicated pages without joy, seeking enchantment and finding pulp.

To my mind it’s Tolkien’s very awareness and appreciation of the natural world that makes his work tower so far above that of other fantasists. I’ve always wanted to explore this distinction more deeply, and recently I came up with a way to do just that, but using Tolkien’s own words rather than generating a bunch of my own.

I started read The Lord of the Rings once again, for the umpteenth time, but this time I went very slowly, appraising each sentence for its “nature content.”

Every time I came across a sentence or passage referring to some element of the natural world—animals, plants, geographical features, weather, time of day—I copied it out in a document of my own. My goal was to create a kind of “rewilded” version of the book that would be nothing but its depictions of nature, with the rest of the story edited out.

Choosing which sentences to select and set apart this way proved more difficult than I’d anticipated. With Tolkien’s writing, in many cases a sentence or passage won’t just be a standalone portrait of a tree, or a landscape, or a weather report—it will also move the story along by referring to what the characters are doing at that moment and how they respond to the environment they’re in. Dramatic tension, mood, and even character revelation usually come along with what is supposedly mere “setting.” An example to illustrate what I mean, from The Fellowship of the Ring:

Yet steadily the mountains were drawing nearer. South of Rivendell they rose ever higher, and bent westwards; and about the feet of the main range there was tumbled an ever wider land of bleak hills, and deep valleys filled with turbulent waters. Paths were few and winding, and led them often only to the edge of some sheer fall, or down into treacherous swamps.

This is Nature with people in it, people struggling to achieve a goal. It’s the default mode for fictional narrative: story is about people, not trees. Tolkien is no exception. But given that such “multipurpose” prose—combining rich setting with the actions of the characters—is so prevalent throughout the novel, I realized pretty quickly I had to set some harsh constraints on the selection process, or I’d find myself copying out half the bloody book! That wasn’t the kind of thing I was after at all. I wanted something far more pared down to the elemental. For the purposes of this project I wanted a Lord of the Rings without any Lord or Ring; without any trace of a quest in it whatsoever.

So I instituted a new rule that if a sentence contained any mention of the characters, their names or even a pronoun—he, she, they—then it was out of consideration. The same rule held for mentions of manmade objects and structures (or Elf, Hobbit, or Dwarf-made) and the names of countries and historical figures, although names of rivers, forests, and other natural features were allowed. Most of the magical phenomenon was also out; at least the magic of antagonists like Saruman and Sauron, which is manifestly anti-nature, as Tolkien intended it to be.

It made me sad to impose such rigorous constraints because they meant that some of the most gorgeous sentences in the entire book were off limits, simply because a “he” or a “they” happened to be present in them. But for the purpose of this experiment I wanted to see what would happen if you removed any trace of “human” presence or intention.

A few sentences seemed to exist in an ambiguous state. What about a description of a wild landscape that mentioned a path or a road running through it? Select it, or pass it by? I had to consider sentences like these on a case by case basis, weighing just how much “wild” they contained. A few walls, windows, and other built structures slipped in as a result (mostly ruins, though, in the process of being taken back by nature). This makes my final gathering of sentences inconsistent in some respects, I’m sure. So be it.

Nevertheless, the constraints meant that the rewilded “narrative” that began to take shape in my document grew ever more, beautiful, weird, and numinous. This was Middle-earth with nobody in it! No Men, no Ringwraiths, no Elves or Dwarves or Orcs, no conflicts or battles or rousing speeches or hobbity wisecracking or escapes in the nick of time. This was just nature. Growth, decay, wind and rain. The Sun rising and going down. The moon coming out. An eagle soaring in the sky. The rivers flowing and the trees swaying in the night. An eerie, wild strain of Illuvatar’s great music of creation.

Odd, evocative juxtapositions began to occur as a result, too, as sentences now rubbed up against each other that in the actual novel occurred entire pages apart. Entirely new connections and themes seemed to spring up from the pages of my growing document. I plan to speak about these serendipitous discoveries in another post.

I also made up a metafiction about how my eco-condensed Lord of the Rings came to be:

The Red Book of Westmarch is, of course, the fictional book mentioned in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, begun by Bilbo Baggins, who recorded his adventures in it, which we know as The Hobbit. Bilbo then gave the manuscript to Frodo, who continued the book by documenting his part in the War of the Ring, the narrative we know as The Lord of the Rings. After Frodo's departure to the Undying Lands, Samwise Gamgee completed Frodo’s story, and then passed the book on to his daughter Elanor, who kept it preserved in the Westmarch region of the Shire. In the Prologue Tolkien mentions that several copies of the book were made.

I imagined this: Before he himself sails away from Middle-earth, Sam has several copies of the book made for his dearest friends, such as Merry, Pippin, and King Elessar. Later in life he also has a copy made that he takes with him on a journey to the Old Forest, to present to Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, whom he has been longing to see once more. (Tom is, of course, Tolkien’s own reverence for the living world given corporeal form. If any character in the novel represents Nature itself, it’s Tom.)

Many years later, when Sam’s daughter is an aged hobbit grandmother, an Old Forest pony arrives at her door, bearing a copy of the Red Book in a satchel on its back. Elanor is startled to discover that this is the copy her father gifted to Tom and Goldberry. She is even more stunned to find that all of the careful handwritten text inside has faded completely away, all of it except for the words that tell of trees and stones and birds and flowers and rivers....

And most wondrous of all, the ink that these words were written with so long ago has turned bright green.

This is what happens, then, when Nature reads your book and rewrites it.

*

I’m considering posting the entirety of my rewilded Lord of the Rings here on Substack, perhaps in three instalments reflecting the three volumes of the novel as originally published between 1954-55. I also need to carefully consider the project in terms of what constitutes fair use in reproduction of someone else’s work. I do see this rewilded LOTR not as a mere copying of parts of the original work, but rather a creative pruning that invites readers to more fully appreciate the living, breathing world that is not just mere setting but the very soul of Middle-earth and the source of the book’s depth and perennial value. I’d like to think Sam, as a gardener, would approve.

For now, what follows are the opening pages of The Green Book of Westmarch. If you enjoy it and want to see more, please give it a like and a comment. I know there are thousands of Tolkien fans on Substack but like my namesake in the Old Forest I inhabit a very quiet corner of this busy platform and rarely stick my neck out. I’d love to hear from you.

That very month was September, and as fine as you could ask.

The late afternoon was bright and peaceful. The flowers glowed red and golden: snap-dragons and sunflowers, and nasturtians trailing all over the turf walls and peeping in at the round windows.

Then the weather clouded over.

Night slowly passed. The sun rose.

Morning went on.

It was early April and the sky was now clearing after heavy rain. The sun was down, and a cool pale evening was quietly fading into night.

A bright fire was on the hearth, but the sun was warm, and the wind was in the South. Everything looked fresh, and the new green of spring was shimmering in the fields and on the tips of the trees’ fingers.

There was another long silence.

Even outside everything seemed still.

Sunlight streamed back again into the room.

The Shire had seldom seen so fair a summer, or so rich an autumn: the trees were laden with apples, honey was dripping in the combs, and the corn was tall and full.

It grew slowly dark indoors.

The sky was clear and the stars were growing bright.

The stream was there no more than a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees.

The night was clear, cool, and starry, but smoke-like wisps of mist were creeping up the hill-sides from the streams and deep meadows. Thin-clad birches, swaying in a light wind above their heads, made a black net against the pale sky.

It was very dark.

A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.

The morning came, pale and clammy.

Away eastward the sun was rising red out of the mists that lay thick on the world. Touched with gold and red the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea.

There was a stream at the foot of the hill.

After some miles, however, the road ceased to roll up and down: it climbed to the top of a steep bank in a weary zig-zagging sort of way, and then prepared to go down for the last time.

The West wind was sighing in the branches. Leaves were whispering. Soon the road began to fall gently but steadily into the dusk.

There was a sound of hoofs in the lane, some way behind, but coming slow and clear down the wind.

The hoofs drew nearer.

Above it the stars were thick in the dim sky, but there was no moon.

The sound of hoofs stopped.

The woods on either side became denser; the trees were now younger and thicker; and as the lane went lower, running down into a fold of the hills, there were many deep brakes of hazel on the rising slopes at either hand.

Beyond, the low lands lay dim and flat under the stars.

The night grew on, and the lights in the valley went out.

Away high in the East swung Remmirath, the Netted Stars, and slowly above the mists red Borgil rose, glowing like a jewel of fire. Then by some shift of airs all the mist was drawn away like a veil, and there leaned up, as he climbed over the rim of the world, the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt.

Suddenly under the trees a fire sprang up with a red light.

At the south end of the greensward there was an opening. There the green floor ran on into the wood, and formed a wide space like a hall, roofed by the boughs of trees. Their great trunks ran like pillars down each side. In the middle there was a wood-fire blazing, and upon the tree-pillars torches with lights of gold and silver were burning steadily.

The sun was shining through the fluttering leaves, which were still green upon the tree.

It was already nearly as hot as it had been the day before; but clouds were beginning to come up from the West. It looked likely to turn to rain.

The banks of the stream sank, as it reached the levels and became broader and shallower, wandering off towards the Marish and the River.

The leaves blew upwards in sudden gusts of wind, and spots of rain began to fall from the overcast sky. Then the wind died away and the rain came streaming down.

Then the sun gleamed out of ragged clouds again and the rain lessened.

There was then a silence, broken only by the sound of the wind in the leaves.

Before long the wood came to a sudden end.

[Image ID: Pine cone, Creative Commons; Birch book handmade by the author]

1. The idea of a magic “system” seems self-contradictory and absurd to me. If the magic in a fantasy novel can be understood and learned by the characters as a consistent set of rules and practices, then it seems to me it ain’t magic, it’s science, a mere Saruman-like “mastery” that for me as a reader leads only to the diminishment of wonder. Tolkien wisely leaves the magical arts in his Perilous Realm of a novel unexplained and unsystematized, giving them real, profound metaphorical—and metaphysical—power.