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| Samwise Gamgee's "Oliphaunt Poem" |
I continued my
(virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging 10 more miles since
my last update. I walked/jogged five miles on Sunday and five more yesterday (Friday).
So far, I’ve logged 1,480 total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and
I’ve got 299 more miles to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed
about 83.2 percent of the total trip.
In relation to Frodo
Baggins’ overall journey to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom in Mordor, I’m on
the tenth day/night of the trip past Rauros Falls, which is March 5/6 on the
Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update a little after midnight on the
morning of March 5, at Mile 1470, which is one mile from the point where Frodo
Baggins, Samwise Gamgee and Gollum see another Nazgul fly over again, on its
way to Isengard.
Five miles later, at
Mile 1475, dawn breaks and Frodo and his companions are able to see guards on
the walls above the Black Gate. They hide in a hollow “delved in the side of a
low hill.” It’s from this vantage point that they can see an army of
Easterlings arrive, then later an army of Southrons. Sam recites the “Oliphaunt”
poem, and Gollum tells of a “secret” way into Mordor. Frodo decides to follow
Gollum south, but not before resting during the daylight hours of March 5.
At dusk on the evening
of March 5, the group resumes their journey by creeping out the west side of
the hollow. Two miles later, at Mile 1477, they walked southwest, west of the
road, which runs in a trenchlike valley between the mountains and the moors. It
has been newly repaired for many miles.
I’ve traveled three
miles past this point to Mile 1480, and the next significant milestone comes four
miles later, at Mile 1484, when they reach the end of the slag heaps and take a
brief rest.
For those of you
reading this for the first time, I began this “Walk to Mordor” fitness
challenge on Jan. 1, 2015. Using a book called “The Atlas of Middle-Earth” by
Karen Wynn Fonstad, fans of “The Lord of the Rings” created this challenge by
mapping out Frodo’s fictional trek to Mordor, calculating the total distance at
1,779 miles. They also used the original "Lord of the Rings" text to
outline the journey, so you can follow their route by keeping up with your
total mileage.
The folks who worked
out the nuts and bolts of this virtual journey have divided it into four parts.
It’s 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell, 462 miles from Rivendell through
Moria to Lothlorien, 389 miles from Lothlorien down the Anduin to Rauros Falls
and 470 miles from Rauros to Mount Doom. (Those locations should sound very
familiar to “Lord of the Rings” fans.) The hobbits averaged 18 miles a day, but
if you walk (or jog, as I sometimes do) five miles a day, it’s possible to
cover 1,779 miles in a year.
If you’re interested in
learning more about the “Walk to Mordor Challenge,” I suggest you check out two
Web sites, http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/07/23/walking/
and http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/.
Both of these sites provide a ton of details about the challenge, including how
to get started.
In the end, check back
next Friday for another update and to see how much closer I am to Mordor. I
hope to knock out at least 10 more miles next week, and I’ll include all that
in my update next week.
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