Before I go rereading all of LotR, you are asking not just for examples of good descriptions of middle earth but specifically for descriptions of middle earth that suggest it is a living entity as in the Gaia theory? Any use of imagery appropriate to describe a body? Ok. Hmm.
Well, there's Carcaras, he's alive, and none too nice, either. Do you think your exemplar image is tied to the marshes as an 'individual' wounded body, and not all of middle earth, just as Carcaras the cruel is an individual mountain? Or is all of middle earth the wounded body?
Rohan stands out in my mind as an important landscape, but I don't remember any body imagery, just a lovely green panoramic view with wind. I can still see every blade of grass leaning sideways with the morning light behind it. Definitely no wounding of Rohan. The brown lands are dead-- home of the entwives, sniff! As the ground before the Morannon is dead -- or if you want middle earth to be one body, they're both gangrened, slowly poisoning the rest. Of course, Mt. Doom and the surrounding fissures are gaping wounds, still bleeding fire. I think I remember the RotK mentioning rents and wounds in that context, and twisting-- no bleeding fire, though it does seem appropriate now that I think of it. When I reread the books recently the plight of the thorns almost made me cry-- desperately trying to drag a twisted life out of the barren rock and acrid air-- hang on, I'll go get the quote.
Quote:
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Upon its outer marges under the westward mountains Mordor was a dying land, but it was not yet dead. ... here things still grew, harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life. ... low scrubby trees lurked and clung, coarse grey grass-tussocks fought with stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere great, writhing, tangled brambles sprawled. ... they went on up the ravine, until it ended in a sharp slope of screes and sliding stones. There the last living things gave up their struggle; the tops of the Morgai were grassless, bare, jagged, barren as a slate
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The poor thorns! Not their fault they've been twisted --it's not like they could flee, they're plants-- and they're trying so hard! And here I'd just got through sniffling over the plight of the poor irredemably messed up orcs.