Increasingly these days I am seized by a wanderlust. I used to be the sort who would look at a path, or a hill, or even just the horizon, and wonder what was just beyond it, or around the corner. During my years in the Corps I got to wander in places I never would have otherwise..and it was good. Later, I married and have had children...and as is common in such cases, became anchored by it. Now my youngest is only two years from (legal) adulthood and the wanderlust is growing stronger. I often think that had I not married and had a family I would even now be wandering the hills and vales of the land, living free and independent. Of course, these days everything is owned so being able to do that in most places is exceptionally difficult, what with nosy folk and overweening government telling everyone what to do and how to do it.
Mind you, I have a care for folk, so am no neo-conservative or republican mantra singer...nor am I liberal or neo-progressive; I am a free person, by the Gods, and I make up my own mind about each thing as I go along, sometimes this way, sometimes that, mostly in my own direction.
I wish to be free again. I have not felt so in a long while, I have realized. Everything has changed and I guess I have not changed with it as much as other folk. I'm out of sync and out of time. Guess I wouldn't change that, for all that it can be a problem from time to time. I do not mean free from family, no, I mean free from interference. That, of course, will never happen.
I spend a lot of time running about the woods and hills, camera in my quiver, hunting up 'Middle Earth' scenes. Naturally, the world is Middle Earth...but most of it here these days is far from what I would like to see in Middle Earth. We are not in harmony with our world. We ought to be. In time we will be...we shall have no choice...the only question is what sort of world will it be by then? Poisoned, blasted, Angband and Anfauglith and Mordor all brought to fruition at last? By our own hands (although a case could be made for the Shadow moving us, this time in dispersed form, rather than cohesive).
I'm a Druid, well, a neo-Druid as it were, more akin to Radagast than anything else in Middle Earth I suppose...and I guess I'd be counted amongst the Green folk if they had a rather less wacko set of things in their agenda. I deal in reality, not utopia. Humanity is not essentially good..nor essentially evil...we are neutral by nature, our choices determining which way we go. If there is a lot of evil in the world, it is the work of those who have chosen that path, or who by inaction have allowed that path to take precedence. We're all a bit dirty I guess.
I note that in the books it was the Goblins and Orcs who were fascinated with machinery and explosions. What does that say about us? ;) Yes, a commentary on the industrialization of England it was, and now on the world at large, but the question stands. How many even think about it?
This is the Age of Men...and the Fourth Age is ending, I think. I have no idea what lies ahead; my sight is curiously veiled beyond a certain point.
So what is one to do? Well, this Ranger lives as simply as she can, learning hand crafts and doing for herself as much as modern life allows. Increasing it all the time as things go along. I hunt, spend a lot of time in the forest and about the land. I listen, and observe. Spend a lot of time in thought. I think for myself and rely not upon the words of others, being suspicious of the Shadow and its various routes into one's thoughts and heart.
I can do nothing but see to myself and my own...and hope any example I set will inspire others to take their own path to simplicity. The pursuit of wealth wearies me..it is a false path, a trap for those with less than their overlords have. The truly valuable things lie within each of us, in my opinion.
I do what I can. It is little enough.
Eledhwen
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