In the House of Tom Bombadil

by C.R. Wiley

the adventure anyone could ask for; doing the thing that must be done, that only you can do—that’s the real adventure. G.K. Chesterton amusingly begins his classic, Orthodoxy, with an account of an “English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.”3 Chesterton’s point is that we already are somewhere strange and fascinating enough to satisfy anyone romantic enough to long for adventure. But do we see it? Seemingly, Bombadil did. And it wasn’t as though the coming of the Dark Lord was the first time that he’d seen the world go to Hell. He’d seen worse. When he spoke of the Dark Lord from the Outside, he wasn’t thinking of Sauron. He was speaking of someone even darker, and more powerful. Presumably he had something else to do in those days, too, beside save the world. And in The Lord of the Rings he is content to let Frodo save Middle Earth. But that didn’t prevent him from saving Frodo—twice. (So, it could be said that Tom actually saved Middle Earth—twice.4) But he did that by staying home and doing what needed doing when only he could do it. And that is an encouraging thought.