Our society seems transfixed with the idea of spending money on vacation and travel as the goal - we know we've succeeded when we travel and are away from home on an adventure during the holidays.

I got to spend these last holidays with my favorite people - Ginny and Jude, spouse and child. As the New Calendar Year is upon us, here are some beautiful words from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (link to the latest coolest edition below), which I also got to re-read, in addition to going to see the movie this December.

Enjoy the poem, and the book, for the first or umpteenth time:

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.