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Mystery of the Entwives LbNA #26345

Owner:Donutz716
Plant date:Oct 12, 2006
Location:
City:???
County:Middlesex
State:Connecticut
Boxes:1
Found by: ???
Last found:Jan 2, 2016
Status:FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Last edited:Oct 12, 2006
Location:
ADKURRHP

This box has been planted for International Plant A Mystery Box Day - 10/7/06. Clues were released for the Mystery Gather in CT which was on 10/14/06.


Clues to Mystery of the Entwives:
This box will remain in the forest where the Ents call their home and will take you less than 10 minutes to find. Go to “Bilbo’s Party Tree”. From the northern side of the tree, head north to the trail marker and stop when you reach it. Now follow the trail counting 78 steps from the marker. Take a reading of 240 degrees, 20 steps to an old "Ent-like" tree. Look to where rock and wood meet to find the Entwives.


Mystery of the Entwives - History

There is a very sad mystery, which can be found in the J.R.R. Tolkien classic The Lord of the Rings. The Ents are among Tolkien’s most original creatures in Middle-earth. Ents are very ancient, tree like beings who tend the trees in the forests as shepherds tend their sheep. They have hands and feet that extend from trunk-like bodies covered in a green or grey bark-like hide. They also have tall heads with hardly any neck, deep-set eyes, and long bushy grey beards.

The Ents dwell in Fangorn Forest, which is located on the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains just north of Rohan. Treebeard is the eldest leader of the Ents who encounters 2 hobbits, Merry and Pippin, when they escape from Saruman the white wizard’s Uruk-hai.

When Merry and Pippin describe the Shire, their homeland, to Treebeard, he immediately asks them if they’ve ever seen Entwives in those parts, assuming from their description of the place that the Entwives would really take to it. The Ents are a dying race, because the Entwives have gone missing and no Entlings have come along in quite some time.

As Treebeard’s story goes, during the Elder Ages the Entwives became less interested in the great trees of the forests and more interested in the fruit trees and herbs and grasses of the plains. To pursue this new interest, the Entwives and eligible Entmaidens wandered east, outside Fangorn Forest, and started gardens where they tended these trees, herbs and grains. When Sauron returned to Mordor, the Ent gardens were destroyed and turned into the wastes known afterwards as the Brown Lands.

When the Ents went looking for the Entwives, they found the gardens destroyed and the Entwives vanished. Although the Ents asked high and low, no one knew where the Entwives had gone. Some said they went west, while others said east or south. After many unsuccessful searches for the Entwives, the Ents began to fear that they would never be reunited with the Entwives until some future dark age in which Ents and their wives have been displaced from Middle-earth. Treebeard sings a haunting Elvish lament to Merry and Pippin that speaks grief of the Ents and Entwives over their separation and their desire for a reunion in an unknown western land.

Pippin: Why are there so few, when you have lived in this country so long? Have a great many died?

Treebeard: Oh, no! None have died from inside, as you might say. Some have fallen in the evil chances of the long years, of course; and more have grown tree-ish. But there were never many of us and we have not increased. There have been no Entings – no children, you would say, not for a terrible long count of years. You see, we lost the Entwives.

Pippin: How very sad! How was it that they all died?

Treebeard: They did not die! I never said “died”. We lost them, I said. We lost them and we cannot find them. I thought most folk knew that. There are songs about the hunt of the Ents for the Entwives sung among Elves and Men from Mirkwood to Gondor. They cannot be quite forgotten.

Here is the Elvish lament:

Ent: When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air;
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

Entwife: When spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;
When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

Ent: When summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold
Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves and the dreams of trees unfold;
When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!

Entwife: When summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I’ll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

Ent: When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain
I’ll look for thee, and call to thee; I’ll come to thee again!

Entwife: When winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again:
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!

Both: Together we will take the road that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.