I am no longer in Ireland. To quote J.R.R Tolkien, “The road goes ever, ever on.”

I’m just going to preface this column with an admission – I am a gigantic geek.

Long before I could read, my sister read the Lord of the Rings aloud to me, and, once I learned to read, that was what I wanted to read to myself. I was indoctrinated young into the wonderful world of books, this world that gives me thousands of windows to other universes.

Throughout it all, Tolkien’s universe has been my favorite.

So, if you will, imagine my excitement as I write you. I’m in Oxford, England, where Tolkien lived, wrote, died and is buried.

I’ve never liked the term ‘fangirl’- It’s unquestionably sexist – but the image it calls to mind is pretty accurate for how I feel about this. Some people fangirl over singers or actors. Some people fangirl over writers who died 40 years ago. I happen to be in the latter category.

I could fill this entire newspaper explaining why Tolkien is the greatest literary genius to ever live, but I doubt a single reader would stick with me to the end if I did that.

I’ll talk about Tolkien to anyone who will listen, so if you’re interested, ask me. Instead, I’m going to think critically about why I, a 20-year-old American woman, will go hundreds of dollars out of my way, halfway around the world, to visit the grave of J.R.R Tolkien, a man I never met.

I don’t know what Tolkien was like in life.

He died long before I was born. I only know what Tolkien’s work meant to me.

Perhaps this is presumptuous, but I credit Tolkien (with the help of my sister) for a substantial amount of who I am.

Because of my early fascination with Lord of the Rings and the presence of older sisters, I learned to read very young – before kindergarten – so I could read them to myself. This forced me to gain a pretty high level of reading comprehension at a very young age, which led to me reading and reading and reading. I started when I was 3 and never slowed down.

The saying goes that the best way to learn to write is to read, and I read a lot. I’ve never taken a grammar class. I learned it all from reading. I read so much, that was the reason I wanted to be a writer. I respected the authors’ dedication to research, which led me to pursue journalism.

You can trace it all back to Tolkien. Nobody created a better universe, a more detailed or better researched world, than him.

Life influences aside, there are very few things in this world I find as truly beautiful as the Lord of the Rings. I know the language bogs people down and yes, it is a little dense – but it’s the most beautiful density in the world.

The story isn’t a collection of battles – its a timeless account of love and friendship and bravery. It is symbolically meaningful, telling a much deeper story than it initially seems. It is fantastically detailed, with entire languages and a complete mythology surrounding the story. It is everything a classic work of fiction should be, and at the highest possible level

 That’s enough singing Tolkien’s praises. Believe me, I could go on. But I’ll spare you. My point in all that is this: the more times I read these books, the more I get out of them.

Books, especially these books, have changed the way I think about and view the world, and I feel that I owe Tolkien a great deal for that. He has effected such a change in me that I have come to idolize him a bit. He seems more than a person, in a way.

I know he was a man like everyone else, just an exceptionally brilliant one. I know he made mistakes like everyone else, had flaws like everyone else, had regrets like everyone else. But he influenced me so much that to me, he was a little more than everyone else.

What I’m describing isn’t unique to me. Whether it’s J.R.R. Tolkien or Beyonce, J.K. Rowling or Liam Hemsworth, we all have people we see as shining a little little brighter than is probably true, simply because of how much they’ve impacted us.

As I wander through Europe, I stop in Oxford to pay respect to a man I never met who changed me. Who would I be if I hadn’t had that early love for Lord of the Rings? A different person than I am now, I can say confidently.