XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: david@trimboli.name   
      
   On 9/3/2011 4:16 AM, Raven wrote:   
   > "sean_q"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   > news:8xf8q.5993$mA3.2332@newsfe19.iad...   
   >   
   >> "Hm! Here we are!" said Treebeard, breaking his long silence.   
   >> "I have brought you about seventy thousand ent-strides, but what   
   >> that comes to in the measurement of your land I do not know."   
   >   
   > The best story-internal explanation is imhoe that Treebeard used an   
   > ent-stride as a linear measure as measured at a leisurely walking-pace.   
   > If he was in a hurry (for an ent) and took much longer strides he would   
   > not count them, but use his established name for "mileage".   
      
   That must be it. Whenever I read that passage I get lost in imagining   
   Treebeard counting to himself for a long time, but that seems silly,   
   even for an ent. He probably looked downhill, or thought back along the   
   journey, and made a quick ballpark estimate in his cultural unit of   
   length-measurement, the ent-stride.   
      
   --   
   David Trimboli   
   http://www.trimboli.name/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)