This cache is placed in Pace Bend Park, a Travis County Park located approximately 30 miles west of Austin on Lake Travis. The park is open 7 days a week from sunrise to 9pm for day-use visitors with overnight camping available. There is a fee to enter the park. Please be respectful of the posted signs and the other people using the park. This cache is placed in accordance with the guidelines for geocaches by the Travis County Park system.
For as many good guys there are in our story, there are an equal number of bad guys. Old Man Willow is the bad guy for finding your way through The Shire.
Background
According to Tom Bombadil, long ago at the dawn of time in Middle-earth, long before even Awakening of the Elves, trees were the only inhabitants of vast stretches of the world. Because the Elves awoke far in the East, it was still a considerable time before any other beings spread into the vast primeval forests of western Middle-earth. A handful of trees survived from this time until the present day, who are angered at the encroachment of Elves and Men and their dominion over the earth; trees who bitterly remember a time long ago when they were as Lords of vast regions of the world. Bombadil relates that of the corrupted trees of the Old Forest, "none were more dangerous than the Great Willow; his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs."
Old Man Willow cast a spell on the hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin), causing them to feel sleepy. Merry and Pippin leaned against the trunk of the willow and fell asleep, while Frodo sat on a root to dangle his feet in the water, before he also fell asleep. The willow then trapped Merry and Pippin in the cracks of its trunk and tipped Frodo into the stream, but the latter was saved by Sam, who, suspicious of Old Man Willow, managed to remain awake. After Frodo and Sam talked about possibly burning the tree such that it was frightened enough to release the others, Merry yelled from inside to put the fire out at the risk of the tree squeezing them to death. They were saved by the timely arrival of Tom Bombadil who 'sang' to the ancient tree to release Merry and Pippin. The tree then ejected the two hobbits.