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.
The heroes in the story of the Lord of the Rings are so numerous but none is so entertaining as Tom Bombadil. He is one of the keys for finding The Shire.
Background
Tolkien invented Tom Bombadil in honour of his children's Dutch doll, and wrote light-hearted children's poems about him, imagining him as a nature-spirit evocative of the English countryside, which in Tolkien's time had begun to disappear.
Tolkien's 1934 poem "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" depicts Bombadil as a "merry fellow" living in a dingle close to the Withywindle river, where he wanders, exploring nature at his leisure. Several of the dingle's mysterious residents, including the River-spirit Goldberry, the malevolent tree-spirit Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk and a Barrow-wight all attempt to capture Bombadil for their own ends, but quail at the power of Tom's voice, which defeats their enchantments and commands them to return to their natural existence. At the end of the poem, Bombadil captures Goldberry, and the two are married. Throughout the poem, Bombadil is unconcerned by the attempts to capture him and brushes them off with an inherent power in his words.
The later poem "Bombadil Goes Boating" anchors Bombadil in Middle-earth, featuring a journey down the Withywindle to the Brandywine river, where Hobbits ("Little Folk I know there") live at Hays-End. Bombadil is challenged by various river-residents on his journey, including birds, otters and hobbits, but cows them all with his voice, ending his journey at the farm of Farmer Maggot, where he drinks ale and dances with the family. At the end of the poem, the cowed birds and otters work together to bring Bombadil's boat home. The poem includes a reference to the Norse lay of Ótr, when Bombadil threatens to give the hide of a disrespectful otter to the Barrow-wights, who he says will cover it with gold apart from a single whisker. The poem mentions a number of Middle-earth locations, including Hays-End, Bree and the Tower Hills, and hints at the events of the end of the Third Age, speaking of "Tall Watchers by the Ford, Shadows on the Marches".
The poems were published in the collections "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and later in "Tales from the Perilous Realm".
Within The Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil is a mysterious figure who functions as a deus ex machina. He and his wife Goldberry, the "Daughter of the River," still live in their house on the Withywindle, and some of the characters and situations from the original poem are recycled directly into story-elements for The Lord of the Rings. In the book, he is described as "Master of wood, water and hill," and nearly always speaks or sings in stress-timed metre: 7-beat lines broken into groups of 4 and 3. He appears in three chapters, "The Old Forest," "In the House of Tom Bombadil," and "Fog on the Barrow-Downs." He is also mentioned briefly in the chapter "The Council of Elrond" and at the end of the story in "Homeward Bound" and "The Grey Havens". Behind Bombadil's simple façade are hints of great knowledge and power, though limited to his own domain.
Tom first appears within the story after Merry and Pippin are trapped by Old Man Willow and Frodo cries for help. Tom commands Old Man Willow to release them, singing him to sleep, and shelters the hobbits in his house for a couple of nights. Here it is revealed that the One Ring has no power over him. He can see Frodo even when the hobbit wears the Ring, and Tom (an immortal) does not turn invisible when he wears the Ring himself. He even tosses the Ring in the air and makes it disappear, but then produces it from his other hand and returns it to Frodo. While this suggests a certain power over the Ring, the idea of giving him the ring is rejected within Book Two's second chapter, "The Council of Elrond." Gandalf says, rather, that "the Ring has no power over him", and believes that Tom would simply not find the Ring to be very important.
Frodo spends two nights in Tom Bombadil's house, each night dreaming a different dream. The first night he dreams of fearful things. The second night he dreams of a grey rain-curtain turning all to silver glass and rolling back, and white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Before sending the hobbits on their way, Tom teaches them a rhyme to summon him if they fall into danger inside his borders again. This proves fortunate, as the four encounter Barrow-wights during "Fog on the Barrow-downs," the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. After saving them from the Barrow-wights, Tom gives each hobbit a long dagger taken from the treasure in the barrows. As the hobbits leave the Old Forest, he refuses to pass the borders of his own land, but before he goes he directs them to The Prancing Pony Inn at Bree.
Towards the end of The Return of the King, when Frodo and Gandalf take their leave, Gandalf mentions that he wants to have a long talk with Bombadil, calling him a "moss-gatherer." Gandalf also says, in response to Frodo's query of how well Bombadil is getting along, that Bombadil is "as well as ever" and "quite untroubled". Gandalf also states that Bombadil is "not much interested in anything that we have done and seen", save their visits to the Ents. At the very end of The Lord of the Rings, as Frodo sails off on the High Sea and passes on into the West and leaves Middle-earth, he has what seems to him the very experience that appeared to him in the house of Bombadil in the second night of his dream.