Monday, December 2, 2013

Day 82: On My Way

As I draw closer to Rivendell I am beginning to get antsy with the remaining miles, wishing that I could fast forward to finally reaching the Last Homely House. At 405.99 miles (653.4 km) I have a little over 50 miles (80.5 km) to go.

Tolkien doesn’t talk much about the days spent travelling to Rivendell, glancing over large sections of travelling to highlight key points in the trip. I have always wondered what the day in and day out of the travelling looked like. Another part of me curses ever wanting to find out since I am now living it. Walking every day is starting to get tiresome, with very few milestones to pass and only several pages of reading devoted to a stretch of 200 some odd miles, I am left with very little to contemplate and a long way to walk.
Enter the title of my post. I’m sure you’ve seen the movies where actions over an extended period of time are condensed down into a montage of snapshots lasting a few minutes. The movie adaptations of Lord of the Rings made good use of travel montages with helicopter panorama shots of the fellowship trekking across beautiful and difficult terrain. I could really use one of those right now, condensing the 200 miles I had to walk into a manageable two minutes of the ridiculous moments (including my flight from a cloud of midges). Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root is a song used in several movies (I’m thinking of Matilda and Ice Age here) for these montages. I periodically play this song as I go, putting together my own montage in my head of my journey so far. Imagining panorama shots of me scaling my mountain trails, trudging through city streets, boulder hopping over a river, shivering in the rain, slipping in mud, running from clouds of bugs, singing ridiculous songs, stopping to take in stunning views, and generally being ridiculous, helps to keep me going on my way to Rivendell. One day, hopefully soon, I will get there and look back on this post with an indulgent smile. But that day is not today. Today I continue on my way.

The Road Goes Ever ON and ON
~Daisy Buttons

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