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| Location of 'Dead Marshes' marked with a red dot. |
I
continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging 15 more
miles since my last update. I walked/jogged five miles on Sunday, five more on
Wednesday and five more today (Friday). So far, I’ve logged 1,361 total miles
on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 418 more miles to go before I
reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about 76.5 percent of the total trip.
In
relation to Frodo’s overall journey to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom in
Mordor, I’m on the fourth day of the trip past Rauros Falls, which is Feb. 29
on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update at Mile 1346, which was
five miles from where the Wetwang begins to curve south to where Frodo and
Samwise Gamgee wind around a rough area and are forced back away from a cliff
on Feb. 28.
Three
miles later, at Mile 1349, they continue to travel in barren, rugged hills,
where there isn’t even any grass, and it’s hear that they stop to eat. Three
miles later, at Mile 1352, they zig-zag into a ravine, and the south edge of
the Dead Marshes appear east of the tumbled lands below. Four miles later, at
Mile 1356, they get lost in a ravine and realize that they are “going in circles.”
It’s heard that runoff from the ravine goes to the marshes.
Three
miles later, at Mile 1359, they climb down to the bottom of another ravine,
where the cliff is still too steep and high. Here they look out toward Mordor
and can smell the Dead Marshes. The go further back and camp in the cold at the
end of the day in a stony hollow surrounded by “great jagged pinnacles of
weathered rock.”
The
next day, Feb. 29, they get up and leave at dawn and find that the cliff has
now turned almost due north. I’ve traveled two miles past this point, to Mile
1361, where they go close to the cliff in hopes of seeing a way down. The next
significant milestone comes one mile later at Mile 1362, where they decided
they must swing far back and then go east again. It’s hear that they also stop
to listen for signs of Gollum.
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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