Tales As Old As Time

September never arrives without the image of Bilbo Baggins starting out on a journey of adventure and discovery…a tale that makes my feet itch to walk the trails, hike through the forest, climb mountains, to seek out the wild and wonderful that surrounds us. OR I can simply settle back and re-read The Hobbit.

Books do that for us, create mind pictures of people, places, and wonders, real or imagined, that speak to us long after we have finished the read. Great books draw us back to the story repeatedly, often in unexpected ways or when we least expect it. I can be working in my garden and recall Yeats’ poem about Innisfree, Beatrice Potter’s Peter Rabbit, The Secret Garden, and The Priory of the Orange Tree. I can be hiking through fallen leaves and remember Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures, or trudging through sand dunes and feel Frank Herbert’s Dune planet shimmering on the horizon. Books offer us worlds, open our minds to possibility – good and bad – and channel our inner dreamer.

One of my favorite activities is to select a classic I read in my teens and re-read the work now, acutely aware of how age and experience change my perspective. The ancients captured human frailty in all its unique and terrible beauty and shared truths that resonate today. The power of greed to corrupt. The rage that tears apart families and institutions. The courage that leads to sacrifice and salvation. No matter the language, the culture, or the era, certain truths remain. Nowhere have I found a more powerful reminder of that human connection to the infinite than standing in the center of the theater at Epidaurus as a line from a Seamus Heaney poem rang through me: “…when epiphany occurred and you met the god…”

No matter which book speaks to you, there is at least one out there that will grab your heart and your imagination and never let go.

What tale has worked that magic on you?

Which author brought you a timeless tale?