Gospel of Aum Dada 2: Lords of the Lake

As a child, I spent all my summers at the lake in New Hampshire. New Moon Lake. It wasn’t so small as to be invaded by algae and it wasn’t so large as to be invaded by monstrous hordes of motor boats. Rather, it was just the right size as to be invaded by a few curious children. We could canoe around its shores in less than half-a-day, and see across the lake in whatever time it takes for light to travel one mile. Of course, the white sands of Hollywood Beach probably sped that light along; such appears to be the nature of this entrancing silver screen of dreams.

Sometimes we would walk around the lake on backcountry roads. And one summer we walked around the lake while playing characters out of ‘Lord of the Rings.’ George was always Gandalf because he was a local country boy familiar with all the unknown paths and secret geographies. He had also whittled himself a striking walking stick with a smoothly carved oaken head of a penis, and that was magic enough for boys our age. My cousin David was always Bilbo. He had begun reading ‘Lord of the Rings’ by beginning at the beginning, which was ‘The Hobbit,’ and he had fallen in love with that primordial world of dragons and dwarves and wargs. I was Aragorn, because sometimes I could be King Elessar Telcontar, and sometimes I could be just good old Strider, the lost sovereign of Gondor.

Although there had been other fantasies played as a child, this one took on larger-than-life qualities. Maybe it was the lake and the stands of white birch trees that hugged the shores like a broken crown. Maybe it was the coming-of-age quality of our uncertain lives. Or maybe it was the book itself, which held a supernatural although vaguely familiar quality. But this Middle Earth dream had more of the tinge of the real than so-called reality itself, and so we loved it. That’s why it wasn’t unexpected when, off on my own one morning waiting for the others to appear, I met Legolas, the great elf of the Woodland Realm. I was chasing darting minnows on the shore when I suddenly saw these tall green leggings rise out of the water. I call them green, but they shimmered like silver birch leaves in a cool silent breeze. “Strider,” he exclaimed. “We cannot tarry any longer in this world. We must make haste for the reality of Rivendell!”

Now, I think he said ‘world’ but he may have said ‘wood,’ and I think he said ‘reality’ but he might have said ‘realty,’ because elves do talk in such strange tongues. And his chronology of the story was all askew, as I would tell him in the following chapter. But I’m afraid I did tarry for the next thirty and some odd years. If I had followed him directly then and there, despite the overwhelming fear I had of doing so, I may have seen through this dream world much earlier, toward that pure truth of Rivendell. But, as I would later ask myself, if not then, then why not now?