This entire trip has been suffused with Tolkien. Pär hasn't re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for several years, and is going to read it when we get back home (in clothbound hardcover, mmmm). To prepare, he brought along The Hobbit to read on this trip. Finishing that, he picked up a used paperback of The Silmarillion and is lovingly working his way through it again.

It's funny, the different aspects that move us. I remember nearly every moment of the trilogy, can quote or paraphrase the very written sentences themselves from any given point in those books. I read them early, often, and with complete attention; they're burned into my mind at the deepest levels. I've never tried to learn Tolkien trivia for the sake of being one of those nerds who knows a lot of trivia, but I've ended up with a fairly encyclopedic awareness of middle-earth minutiae anyway. My interest in that world is great.

And yet somehow I can't ever quite get through the Silmarillion. I've tried. The early bit, the creation myth, I absorbed so thoroughly that it's intertwined with all other creation myths in my mind. Tolkien did such a good job of weaving his mythos in with other really ancient primal stuff that when I try to think of each separately, I can't sort out the difference between the Judeo-Christian biblical stories and what Tolkien wrote. So that much of the Silmarillion, clearly I got. But the rest of the book just didn't take with me. Elves here, elves there, I can't keep them all straight. (At least, I couldn't the last time I tried to read the book, which was probably a decade ago.)

Pär, on the other hand, might love The Silmarillion best of all Tolkien's works. I think it's the one closest to the rhythms of Norse mythology and Scandanavian epic sagas, so it resonates with him in a powerful way that it does not with me. I'm thrilled that Pär's reading it again now, because as we travel, he tells me the Silmarillion stories. They work beautifully as oral storytelling. As I drive through the desert hearing these tales, they catch my imagination and come beautifully alive for me at last. I wish Pär would go on telling me stories like this forever.

Every now and then as Pär recounts some part of the tale, he'll open up his book and find a brief passage to read aloud:

"The Noldor also it was who first achieved the making of gems; and the fairest of all gems were the Silmarils, and they are lost."

He closes the book again, breathes out a long sigh. "Isn't that gorgeous?"

"Yes," I say. "So straightforward, so magical. Amazing restraint."

Pär nods. "The whole book is like that."

"Tell me more about Feanor," I beg, and he does.

It's a long journey from San Francisco to Santa Fe and back again. We get bored with "Twenty Questions" very quickly and invent our own version of the game, in which one person thinks of a thing from the Tolkien books and the other attempts to guess what it is, with no concern for how many questions it takes to get there. We name our game "Twenty Questions to Rule Them All". It keeps us happily amused all week long.

After a few hours of baking in the car during the high heat of afternoon, the game sometimes takes a turn for the slap-happy.

KAREN:
I'm thinking of a thing.

PÄR:
Is it Sam's butt?

KAREN:
No. Do you often think about Sam's butt?

PÄR:
I'm just checking. So... is it a living being?

Many questions later, he figures out that my thing is the palantir that Wormtongue threw out of Isengard. Then it's Pär's turn to think of a thing. He has one weakness in this game, which is his tendency to telegraph his intentions through the questions he asks in the previous round.

PÄR:
Okay. Hee hee! I'm thinking of a thing. Hee!

KAREN:
Is it Sam's butt?

PÄR:
No!

KAREN:
Is it someone's butt?

PÄR:
Yes! Goddamit! How did you know?

KAREN:
Wild guess. Does this butt appear in the trilogy?

PÄR:
Define "appear".

KAREN:
Does the personage, of whom this butt is a part, make an appearance.

PÄR:
...Yeeesss...

KAREN:
In The Hobbit?

PÄR:
Not really, no.

KAREN:
In Silmarillion?

PÄR:
Yes.

KAREN:
Is it a humanoid butt?

(I am such a nerd. I am John Cusack in Sixteen Candles.)

PÄR:
Not a humanoid butt, no.

KAREN:
Is it Sauron's butt?

PÄR:
Goddamit! Yes!

KAREN:
Ha!

PÄR:
I can't believe you guessed that.

KAREN:
I can't believe your thing was the Dark Lord, on his dark throne, in the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie: his butt. Anyway, are you sure that he isn't humanoid?

PÄR:
He's not humanoid.

KAREN:
Hm. I think he starts out taking a humanoid form, like when they're calling him the Necromancer in The Hobbit. But I don't think Sauron quite has a physical body anymore by the end of the Third Age. He's more of a nebulous spirit that's poured most of his power and self into the ring. When the ring is destroyed, he goes up and disperses like a black cloud. So what I'm saying is, I'm not sure he actually has a butt.

PÄR:
I think he is not humanoid, and he does have a butt.

KAREN:
Well, I guessed the answer, anyway, so I'm satisfied.

PÄR:
(muttering)
I should have chosen the balrog's butt. Or -- all balrog butts!

KAREN:
Okay, how about we make a rule that from now on, you can't have anyone's butt as your thing in this game?

PÄR:
Why not?

KAREN:
If you just keep on choosing butts, it's going to get annoying. "Eowyn's butt." "Shelob's butt."

PÄR:
I'll take that under advisement when I make my choices, but I won't accept the rule. It's a stupid rule.

KAREN:
Okay. I'm thinking of a thing.

PÄR:
Is it someone's butt?

KAREN:
Goddamit!