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OK! I'm at ~13,000 words and I've got loads more to say about environmentalist themes in the #LordOfTheRings. I really think this could be a book!

Today I looked at building with living nature. Real world indigenous peoples such as the Khasis in India use living trees as bridges. The elves of Lothlorien live in a city in the branches in the trees. Nonfiction, fiction; these are both visions of a world in which we live more in harmony with the world.

Thinking about #conservation and the Elves in the #LordOfTheRings The elves want to preserve things as they were in the elder days. They don't really have a vision for future - some hope to use the power of the three to heal the world, but the wisest, like Galadriel, assume that their time is coming to an end even if Frodo succeeds in his quest.

In the real world, the environmental movement brings together people with many different motivations, and different degrees of hope for the future.

I went looking for a recent long-odds climate struggle and found the #StopLine3Pipeline protests.

I had forgotten Tim Walz was governor of Minnesota during the protests.

Have you heard of the Te Urewaera Act of 2014? It's a pretty cool law from the Māori that recognized a New Zealand forest as its own legal entity.

"The key principles of the new Act are:

- Te Urewera ceases to be a national park and is vested in itself as its own legal entity; and
- Te Urewera will own itself in perpetuity with the Board to speak as its voice to provide governance and management in accordance with the principles of the Act"

environmentguide.org.nz/region

www.environmentguide.org.nzTe Urewera Act • Environment Guide

I want to find a real-world equivalent to the Ents breaking Isengard.

I am tempted to draw parralels to incidents of eco-sabotage, but the comparison is imperfect. The ents are a nation, for one thing. The fight in Isengard is more of a seige of an army than an incident of monkey-wrenching.

I spent much of my early career thinking about peacebuilding. But in this book, I can only reference in a few paragraphs what I spent years trying to learn about nonviolent civil resistance.

It makes sense. It's a book about Tolkien and trees, not arguments on the impact and efficacy of nonviolence.

It just feels like I'm exercising a ghost limb.

What a line from Tolkien. I actually teared up a little in reading it. I think about the things we lose daily.

"Well, cheers and all that to you dearest son. We were born in a dark age out of due time (for us). But there is this comfort: otherwise we should not know, or so much love, what we do love. I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water."

theanarchistlibrary.org/librar

The Anarchist LibraryFrom a letter to Christopher TolkienJ. R. R. Tolkien From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 29 November 1943 [In the summer of 1943, Christopher, then aged eighteen, was called up into the Royal...

I have a pretty good excerpt of my book on Tolkien themes and the modern environmentalist movement. I'm mixing together the Ents destroying Isengard with the Brazillian government breaking up illegal mining infrastructure in the Amazon. I'm going to publish it soon - hope you folks are interested.

There's a generation-long restoration project in Qianyanzhou. This auto-translated article probably has some errors, but the poetry of the language comes through.

"A piece of copper on a sunny day, a bag of pus on a rainy day. Looking from a distance, it's all yellow, looking closely, it's all water and soil."

baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=16842

"A proverb that was circulated in Qianyanzhou at that time revealed the harsh environment at that time. Soil erosion in the hilly areas of Qianyanzhou was becoming increasingly serious, and the fertile red soil was washed away, resulting in a decline in crop yields."

I've finished part 2 of my book on environmental themes in the Lord of the Rings. Next up... the role of hope and despair.

In addition to being gorgeous, funny, and devastatingly intelligent, my beautiful partner @mara is a talented editor. She's helping me polish my pitch sample, which I'll be sending to publishers (and maybe sharing with you lovely people.)

Feels like this is happening.

What do #Ents have to do with illegal miners in the Amazon rainforest? What do water protectors share with Hobbits traversing the wastes of Mordor? "Where the Roots are long" is an upcoming book (by me!) which explores environmentalist themes in the Lord of the Rings and how they resonate in the modern movement to address the climate crisis.

Read an excerpt: derek.caelin.cloud/where-the-r

☝️ FYI above message: @dynamic @Br3nda @Virginicus @Zumbador @RhinosWorryMe

Tagging you because you engaged with me on this topic before.

@derek @dynamic @Virginicus @Zumbador @RhinosWorryMe

this thread strayed a long way from Te Urewera

@Br3nda ah, sorry. Te Urewara shows up in a chapter on the rights (and personhood) of nature.

Potato ENTHUSIAST

@derek

something to consider. LOTR in new zealand is very colonial. the idea that NZ was another england, a second britain, was strong in the colonisation as indigenous people were opressed, their language banned, their places renamed. The same is the vibe of marketing places in NZ as a shire, intensely british style literature into a land that already has it's own other mythology .

@derek basically, tread carefully in that space, as there is a lot of harm, pain, and violence still under that British colonisation, holding up these foreign colonial ideas as better than what Maori already had.

@Br3nda thank you, I will try to be sensitive to this concern.