As always, spoiler warnings...

Legolas took a deep breath, like one that drinks a great draught after long thirst in barren places. 'Ah! the green smell!' he said. 'It is better than much sleep. Let us run!' (Book 3, The Riders of Rohan)

Tolkien's Elves are more in tune with the natural world than humans, because their spirit (fea) and physical selves (hroa) are aligned with Arda (Earth), whereas humans have Earth-bound hroa but fea that long to be elsewhere. This is related to their ultimate fates: humans to die and leave the circles of the world, and Elves to be serial longeval within Arda. This spiritual underpinning may have existed at the time the LOTR was written, but it is not mentioned in the book, at least not in these terms. Despite my plan to stay as much within the LOTR text as possible, I mention fea and hroa, and this difference between Elves and Humans, as an expedient way to address some of things that will come up, particularly in this section, such as why an Elf might favorably compare breathing in nature's 'green smell' to sleep (sleep itself being a complicated subject which will come up later). If Legolas is consistently portrayed as more connected to the natural world than other races, it seems that the nature of Elvish fea and hroa are likely the reason why

But this is taking us away from the LOTR, where Tolkien does not address these things head-on.

Back to this section's opening quote. I can personally relate to calling a smell 'green,' but the effect of smelling such smells is not normally seen as a substitute for what sleep provides. We might be tempted to call this hyperbole, but there is no sense Legolas trucks in hyperbole, so I read it as a genuine expression of what the natural world means to him as Elf. We'll come back to this quote later, in the section on sleep.

When it comes to this relationship to the natural world, there are some things said about or by Legolas that are not terribly out of the ordinary, at least for fictional characters or beings who are portrayed as being 'closer to nature' than the average person. For example, the narrator (presumably Frodo) writes that 'The heart of Legolas was running under the stars of a summer night in some northern glade amid the beech-woods' (Book 2, The Great River). On entering Minar Tirith, Legolas notes the absence of living things. 'They need more gardens,' said Legolas. 'The houses are dead, and there is too little here that grows and is glad. If Aragorn comes into his own, the people of the Wood shall bring him birds that sing and trees that do not die.' (Book 5, The Last Debate).

Similarly, his reaction on coming to Lothlorien seems appropriate. 'There lies the woods of Lothlorien!' said Legolas. 'That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land... My heart would be glad if I were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime!' (Book 3, Lothlorien).

He goes on about the trees of Lothlorien quite a bit, and since he has lived much of his long life in a forest, it's understandable. He says, 'I am at home among trees, by root or bough, though these trees are of a kind strange to me, save as a name in song. Mellyrn they are called, and are those that bear the yellow blossom, but I have never climbed in one. I will see now what is their shape and way of growth.' (Book 2, Lothlorien). That last bit about the 'shape and way of growth' is a bit unusual, but understandable. It is a bit odder, however, when he personifies the tree they camp near outside of Fangorn: 'Look!' he said. 'The tree is glad of the fire.' (Book 3, The Riders of Rohan).

Fangorn being Fangorn, maybe we again need to cut him some slack. Once inside Fangorn, Legolas, as much as he loves the place, does seem to feel the same thing Merry and Pippin did when they entered the old forest: 'A queer stifling feeling came over them, as if the air were too thin or too scanty for breathing.' (Book 3, Treebeard) Later Legolas will say 'Let us go up and look about us!... I still feel my breath short. I should like to taste a freer air for a while.' (Book 3, The White Rider). That kind of reaction is unusual for someone so at home in the woods, and eventually he will tell Treebeard, 'I should dearly love to journey in Fangorn's Wood. I scarcely passed beyond the eves of it, and I did not wish to turn back.' (Book 3, The Voice of Saruman). However, we do soon get an explanation of why he seeks 'freer air:'

Here we see an extraordinary ability to commune with the woods, far beyond simply reading the local area around them. Somehow he is remote-sensing into those places Treebeard mentions to the Hobbits, the trees 'in the valleys under the mountains' who are 'bad right through' (Book 3, Treebeard). These appear to be what Legolas 'hears' as the 'faintest echoes' of the black hearts of trees.

The general ability to 'read' nature may be one we are not surprised to find out an Elf has. It is a trope, even outside of fantasy, for a character who is connected to the land. (Any fantasy trope is likely to be because of Tolkien, so care must taken in ascribing those to J. R. R.) However, this does seem to go beyond having a generic 'nature sense.' And the Elf is the only member of the Company to have this sense of Fangorn, so it certainly sets him apart.

Like his connection to the woods, we can see similar abilities regarding horses, as Legolas does not need a saddle or rein when riding. Here Tolkien does explicitly extend this ability to all Elves: Legolas can tame and direct Arod the horse with 'but a spoken word: such was the Elvish way with all good beasts' (Book 3, The Riders of Rohan). (This may be one of those cases, however, where Tolkien 'discovers' this fact at this moment as, earlier in the book, Glorfindel's horse has a headstall and reins, back in Book 1, Flight to the Ford.)

Similarly, Legolas is able to coax Arod to take the Paths of the Dead: 'Legolas laid his hands on his eyes and sang some words that went soft in the gloom, until he suffered himself to be led...' (Book 5, The Passing of the Grey Company). And Legolas correctly interprets Arod's and Hasufel's voices when they ran off to greet Shadowfax: 'I heard them clearly. But for the darkness and our own fear I should have guessed that they were beats wild with some sudden gladness. They spoke as horses will when they meet a friend that they have long missed.' (Book 3, The White Rider).

All of this seems fairly standard for these kinds of 'connected to nature' fictional characters, like James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo (aka Deerslayer), but a pumped up version. That is understandable, as Legolas is not a merely a human with a special connection to the natural world, but truly a different kind of being.

What about water? Leaving aside the call of the Sea for now - associated with the fate of Elves - the only mentions of a special relationship to water is specific to the river Nimrodel and therefore associated with Lothlórien. Legolas tells the Company that 'the water is healing to the weary,' and that 'the sound of the falling water may bring us sleep and forgetfulness of grief.' (Book 2, Lothlorien).

However, Elves, or at least Legolas, can apparently commune with rocks. When the party enters Eregion, Gandalf notes '...Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.' Legolas replies, 'But the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them. Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago.' (Book 2, The Ring Goes South).

This does seem to move into new territory. Having spent most of his life with the caves of the Elvenking, his father, as his home address, it might be possible Legolas' relationship to rocks is unusual, but that is not played out elsewhere. He does not like Helm's Deep (Book 3, Helm's Deep), and while he eventually comes around to an appreciation of the Glittering Caves, when shown them through Gimli's eyes after the War, his initial reaction is unambiguous: If invited to see them, '...I would give gold to be excused,' said Legolas; 'and double to be let out, if I strayed in!' (Book 3, The Road to Isengard).

Communing with rocks may be the most unusual claim Legolas makes. However, it is when the company ride through the 'temporary' forest of Huorns, after the battle at Helm's Deep, that we witness what may be the most notable difference between Legolas and everyone else when it comes to the natural world. No one else reacts to the Huorns like Legolas does, and if Gimli were not sharing a horse with him, this moment might have been the last we see of Legolas.

This is an extraordinary passage. The Huorns have just wiped out all of the Orcs who tried to flee the battle, and everyone else seems positively unnerved, sticking close to the path which the trees themselves have provided. It is notable that when their Ent shepherds appear, the Ents ignore all of the non-tree folks, even the Elf among them. There is nothing to indicate the Ents or the Huorns want anything to do with Elves (or Men, Dwarves, etc.). Gandalf's words suggest Legolas might have been in danger of great harm or death if he went into the wood, but we cannot know exactly. As is often the case with Gandalf, his warning ('Now is not your time') is cryptic.

As is not uncommon in the LOTR, Tolkien provides no clear explanation for any of this: Legolas' impulse, for the woods' appearance (what are the eyes?), or what would have happened to Legolas if he had fled into the Huorn forest. The pull on Legolas, whatever its cause, must have been tremendous for him to so suddenly abandon the quest he has so recently risked his life for. Is there something akin to the Siren's call here? Clearly if Legolas had been alone, he would not have - perhaps could not have - resisted the urge to leave the track in an attempt to 'understand their thought.'

Continue on to Part 3...