Tolkien Calendar: The Great Years

Our beloved author continues his pattern of darkness and light in The Lord of the Rings. After the dark days and the disappearance of Gandalf into the dark abyss, we, along with the Fellowship, require some light, healing, and new life. And so we enter the blessed land of Lothlorien. In it we find all the things that Tolkien must have learned healed the soul after death in warfare: beauty, quiet, music, remembrance, nature, reverence, and friendship. Haldir says it best, to a blindfolded Merry as they approach the City of Trees:

The anticipation of the healing beauty of Lothlorien is carried on the wind in the leaves of the mallorn trees long before the Fellowship nears Caras Galadhon. Legolas and Aragorn seem always to say the name of the land with a reverential sigh: "'Lothlorien!' said Aragorn. 'Glad I am to hear again the wind in the trees!'" Indeed, the mallorn trees seem to have a mysterious life of their own, as Frodo feels when he touches one: " . . . never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself."

Only with such a deep and elemental experience of life itself can our heroes recover from the devastating death of Gandalf, their leader and guide. During their stay in Lothlorien, each member of the Fellowship establishes again his relationship with what is true, good, and beautiful, in order to prepare for the rest of the journey.

Perhaps as an illustration of this, Frodo finds his mysterious friend, Aragorn, holding a blossom of elanor on the hill of Cerin Amroth, murmuring perhaps the most beautiful words in the trilogy, "'Arwen vanimelda, namarie!'".