Calling all hobbits

For a long time now, I’ve known that I am a hobbit . . . without the furry feet, of course. My Shire is the Bulkley Valley, specifically Quick, B.C., which isn’t a place at all if you’re reading road signs. But it provides me with a simple life and simple pleasures.

If the doctor allowed it, I’d eat six breakfasts of bacon and eggs per day, and I’d be smoking (cigarettes, not pipes). I hate adventures and don’t travel much. I love tale-telling, and it’s true that I grow taters. I wander about my Shire and, like Wendell Berry, I think that “when field and woods agree, they make a rhyme. . . .”

Threats from outside

I haven’t seen any dragons, but a looming coal mine could destroy my Shire if no heroes prevent it. My beloved Shire. My haven. A rest for the soul. Although I might be a small person in the wide world, there are tasks for me. . . maybe even standing up to dragons.

From my Shire vantage point, I see both the destruction of our forests and land. I bear witness along with Gerard Manley Hopkins, who mourned at the end of his poem “Binsley Poplars”: After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. / Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve / Strokes of havoc unselve / The sweet especial scene, / Rural scene, a rural scene, / Sweet especial rural scene.

The eagles will come

Despite the horrors of today’s Mordors and their witting or unwitting pawns, I believe that the unexpected grace is the evangelium that gives hope. Grace, never to be counted on to return or forced in any way, is the true state of this world. I believe the final defeat of evil will come in one or many ways. In one or many smaller or larger victories marked by “sudden joyous turns.” The eagles will come. Meanwhile, I slog on, taking on powers greater than me or, at times, just sitting in the sun watching a grouse feed under a spruce tree and thinking about planting taters.