So, midway through our daily walk through the forest, my phone notified me that I had done it, I had destroyed the one ring. Sauron had fallen, all of that.
It's all part of an admittedly silly but truly fun app that lets you mark your progress through Middle Earth as, in my case, you walk around Berlin. Or whereever you are vacationing.
The app converts your step counter steps to steps from Hobbiton, where you are a neighbor of someone with a different but very similar ring, to Mount Fire, which if they had the full rights to Tolkien's works might have been slightly different.
Now, in the books, Frodo and Sam completed this same walk in something less than 7 months, while my trek took a bit more than 14. But, the truth is, I've been on this hike for most of my life. I just didn't have a good way of measuring it, in the before days.
Tolkien's works are what made me, forced me, to fall in love with reading, and then writing. His works get the credit, or blame, for my career in journalism. That career sent me travelling all around the world. I ventured into war zones, where it quickly became clear that death in battle is not heroic, it's just sad and pointless. Unlike at Helm's Deep, war instead of bringing out the best of us, focuses almost entirely on bringing out our worst demons. I've counted up, and found that I've worked in something like 67 countries. Of course, most of those places I've visited because something has gone horribly wrong. But I'd visit, and write, and hope that somehow, a bit of light on a dark subject might make a difference.
In Tolkien's world, it would have.
After that career, his work brought me here, a lovely, wonderful place.
But, today, upon reaching that false but very true goal, I had a moment of inner smiles. There was a moment of thinking I'd shared, in some stupid way, in the adventure I'd always wanted to share in. I did the math. The walk is the equivalent of a walk straight from my house to Marrakech, if I could walk on water, which in the app I guess I can. Marrakech seemed appropriate, as it is where some of the steps on this journey were recorded.
However, what soon became clear to me is just as I have long believed that the words "Well, I'm back" are the saddest words ever penned, there really wasn't much joy in the journey being complete. The journey is what makes life worth living.
So, you know, I hit "Start over" and this evening I'm back in the fields of the Shire.
