Tolkien's Reading of Nature

Tolkien wanted his world to stand alone and not remind us of our world. He would write letters where he described the whole phenology of a plant blooming. In Lewis and Narnia, it's always a full moon. It's a different cosmos. The moon is always full. When you're in his landscapes, you're experiencing a landscape the way that he would on a walk. And so I think it's a journey. For Tolkien, its about like finding a rabbit under the brush or trying to find the actual recipe for cooking the Coney.