Take away the Ents, the Nazgûl, the Orcs, and all those pesky battles and Elven deliberations from The Lord of the Rings, and really what you have is a series about one very epic hike. But how epic is it? Well, it depends on who you ask. Tallying up how many miles it took for Frodo and Sam to get to Mount Doom is a popular past-time for LOTR fans, and if you visit New Zealand, where Peter Jackson’s trilogy was filmed, there are plenty of hiking tours designed to put you in the Hobbitses’ foot-steps.
The Venn Diagram of Tolkien-lovers and hiking fans doesn’t end there. As it turns out, there’s a whole sub-culture of thru-hikers—those who hike long-distance trails end-to-end—who are also huge fantasy readers.
Writer Rebecca Booroojian—a thru-hiker herself, nicknamed “Gandalf” on the Appalachian Trail—wrote about it in a thoughtful essay over at Outside Online.
From “Not all who wander are lost” graffiti and Instagram captions, to second breakfasts on the trail, to thru-hikers with elvish tattoos, Booroojian explores all the ways these intrepid questers incorporate their love of fantasy into the way they approach hiking—like visualizing often-extreme hiking conditions as part of an epic quest. She herself marked down where she’d pass the Frodo/Sam/Mt. Doom bench-mark, and named her love of fantasy novels a huge influence on motivating her to thru-hike.
“The obvious connection is a fascination with adventure and the unknown,” said one fellow thru-hiker she interviewed. “We want to picture ourselves as Frodo or Bilbo, stepping out our front door on a journey to the ends of the earth.”
While Booroojian’s essay focuses on books, there are some other fantasy works we can think of that would make for some epic hiking motivation. Open world fantasy games like Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn are particularly great for this, and some hikers here at Tor.com HQ have definitely mapped out how long it’d take for you to cover the entire map of Skyrim in IRL miles. Also, The Witcher? Great hiking simulator, with some horseback riding and rowing included for variety.
Are you a hiker whose treks are inspired by fantasy? If so, drop your recs in the comments!
I really think you need to amend that title, or at least add to the text, that Long-Distance Hikers AND Long-Distance Runners love fantasy. I know that hiking is more true to the source material, but serious long distance running is just long distance hiking except faster. It’s the same crowd of people and mindset except skinnier.
Audible books have been my motivation and distraction day in and day out. Pulling a 25 mile, 6 hour jaunt through the woods after dinner? Queue up Children of Hurin. Need a book series to listen to 1-2 hours at a time each day during your morning trail run? Good thing the star wars expanded universe has so many books, like Aftermath or Trawn Trilogy. Need something more motivating for your 100 mile race? Then pick up some action books like White Fang, 100k Leagues Under the Sea, Enders Game, Ready Player One
Long Distance Hikers AND Long Distance Runners
I’m not an epically long-distance hiker (or long-distance at anything except friendships), but I love hiking and fantasy. Long walking journeys and all other forms of tragelogue are among my favorite things to find in a story, and can sometimes serve as the single thing that makes me enjoy reading something. My main reason (aside from Gollum) for loving The Hobbit and LOTR is the focus on journeying. That, and the beautiful prose. I love purple prose, the purpler the better, especially in descriptions of landscapes. I read it and I write it. Fantasy didn’t exactly give me my love of hiking, or vice versa, but I do blame the Redwall series for making me desperately love forests, not only as they are in real life but as Brian Jacques gorgeously imagined them.
It would be so neat if there was an app that overlaid the journey the Hobbits took in the LOTR books over a running/walking/hiking route. something like:
Run#1: You’ve left the Shire and reached Bucklebury Ferry!
Run#2: You’ve reached Bree and the Prancing Pony.
There’s a fun running app called Zombies Run where each episode takes you on a small adventure as part of a larger story arc. How great would a LOTR themed one be? I’d buy it!
4 is a great idea. Shouldn’t even need an app – just a set of routes loaded into Strava or something?
The ideal would be working out a set of routes that were not just the same length as the stages of the book, but similar in surroundings; so you reach an actual ferry just as your app says “you have reached Bucklebury Ferry”, hike through real woods while the app says you’re in the Old Forest, etc.
Though I can’t imagine wanting to listen to an audiobook while hiking. A huge part of the joy of it is the silence (if alone) except for the sounds of the world around you, or chatting to your companions. My enjoyment wouldn’t be increased by replacing that with the natterings of Timothy Zahn.
I did some multi-day hikes in New Zealand and it’s definitely not hard to imagine yourself in Middle Earth there! I can see why the love of fantasy and hiking go so well together…
After my travels I definitely Etsy’d some ‘Not all who wander are lost’ stuff! I even contemplated that as a tattoo to remember my experiences in Middle Earth, but eventually settled on some hiking boot footprints. It was a close call though :)
I’m currently re-reading LOTR for the first time since I first read it many years ago, and I can just imagine hiking through those beautiful landscapes. I need more books like that!
Well, I grew up hiking in New Zealand, so my long distance tramps were literally Middle Earth. Seriously I spent about half the film trilogy quietly going “Been there. And there.”
But my company was either music in my own head, or little books at the end of the day (Compact Discworlds ftw) or storytelling over a fire (A friend could relate the entire album of Badjelly the Witch, voices and all).
The biggest fantasy link is when you reach a pass or col and look out over what is to come and wonder at what you’re going to find. It can truly be a land of mystery, especially when the maps are less than accurate.
@8
Still ’round the corner there may wait…
@6 I totally agree! Cut off the tech and listen to the birds. Also, the Grizzly bear or orc sneaking up on you. Paying attention saves lives!
With bad knees which can’t handle slopes and other problems, I’m stuck on a treadmill at the gym, these days, with my teeny tiny iPod playing podcasts. I don’t miss the sound of the horrible radio station blaring and the middle-aged guys discussing sports.
10: to be fair, I think on rereading comment 1 that he’s talking about listening to audiobooks while running, not while hiking, which is very different. I listen to stuff while I’m running as well.
After my travels I definitely Etsy’d some ‘Not all who wander are lost’ stuff!
This cartoon rings true https://imgur.com/q5GkWOc
“Not all those who wander are lost. Except lieutenants. The lieutenant is lost as shit.”