Wanderers

June 10, 2021

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolkien

I can think of only one story where a scruffy homeless man becomes a king.

The words vagabond, nomad, rambler, tramp, and gypsy are not usually terms of endearment. I call myself a wanderer – to be specific, one of the Sonoma County Wanderers, also known as a group of hikers who regularly traverse local trails seeking nature, exercise, and comradery. Our slogan is “Not all those who wander are lost.” But while some of our hikers know that our motto originated with Tolkien, few if any of them know the name of the character to whom that phrase refers.

In his essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau describes the act of wandering by foot as a sacred undertaking, a higher calling, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the natural world. He says that there are at least two origins of the word “saunterer”: a pilgrim (Sainte-Terrer, or one who goes to the Holy Land), and a person without a home (sans terrer).

A pilgrim suggests a person on a religious or spiritual journey, such as many of those who walk the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain seeking to find themselves or God or some kind of adventure or epiphany.

A person without a home implies a transient, rootless individual who is just trying to survive.

The difference between a pilgrim and a homeless person is that the former has a sense of purpose or mission, whereas a person without a home may or may not feel a higher calling.

According to Thoreau, “every walk is a sort of crusade…to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels” (civilization).

The reason that I’m currently reading The Lord of the Rings for the fifth or sixth time is that Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy inspires me, especially at a time of recent political, social, and economic turmoil. The journey of four hobbits, an elf, a dwarf, two men, and a wizard to face and overcome terror by destroying the evil Ring of Power is not a spiritual quest, so the travelers are not pilgrims. And although they are all homeless during their long and perilous mission, they are not aimless drifters.

One of the nine adventurers is Aragorn, a mysterious, rugged, quiet, humble, yet heroic warrior whose aristocratic blood entitles him to be a king but whose virtuous character is hidden by his grubby exterior. It is to Aragorn that Tolkien refers when he says that

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

Aragorn lived a life of poverty, exile, and obscurity. Yet over many decades he devoted himself to service to others. He never forgot his royal origins, but he experienced a nobility of purpose and character, if not patrician rank. Homelessness and suffering humbled him, but also deepened him.

I’m not suggesting that warriors like Aragorn are the most courageous among us. In The Lord of the Rings the two bravest characters were arguably Frodo and Sam, ordinary hobbits with extraordinary determination and commitment to the cause of destroying the Ring of Power.

As a Sonoma County Wanderer, I enjoy hiking. As a Walker Errant in the tradition of Thoreau, I’m a spiritual pilgrim and seeker of nature. As human beings, we can aspire, like Aragorn, to be in service to a greater cause. What that cause is will vary for each of us. But if our purpose enables us to align with the circle of life, the ring of joy, then as with Aragorn we will be ennobled by our vision.

At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn fulfills his destiny and becomes king of Gondor. For the rest of us, becoming a king or queen is probably not in the cards. But as Aragorn learned the hard way, there is something greater than status: being true to our vision, our calling, our inner gold.