[Alatáriël Lossëhelin]

I love that this goal (I plan to walk to Mordor and back again) is such a large goal that it is a 1-2 or even 3 years long! Nothing in the past has provided me with such an exciting, reachable and long-term goal. Yay! lol

Ala...woo! many accents...may I call you Ala? Thank you for the welcome Always great to walk in such good and open-armed company.

I continue to traipse along and am delighted that eventually I'll get out of the Shire.

Anorial: I started this walk just over a year ago, and for the longest time felt that I would never catch up. It seemed to take me weeks and weeks to make it out of the Shire. My current goal is to reach Mt. Doom by Frodo's birthday this September. Of course, then we'll have to travel back to Bag End...

Feel free to call me Ala...I go by many different names. Not so many as Aragorn or even Gandalf, but I'll answer to Ala, Alatáriël, Alcmenelwen, Hildigard, or even "über geek".
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We have passed through the Dead Marshes and traversed the barren Nomans-land. I fear the Dark Lord may sense our presence, as the winged terror has overtaken us several times over the past few days. We are now come to the Morannon, the gate into the Black Land, and possibly the end of our journey. It is impossible to enter Mordor here, unless it be as prisoners. Sméagol says there is another way over the mountains further south, and the Ringbearer has agreed to follow him once again. I dislike and mistrust this wretched creature--even though we would not have made it through the Marshes without him--and I will not abandon Frodo and Sam to his care. We will journey south with him, but I will be on my guard.

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"Is it not guarded?" Frodo repeated.

"Yes, yes, perhaps. No safe places in this country," said Gollum sulkily. "No safe places. But master must try it or go home. No other way." They could not get him to say more. The name of the perilous place and the high pass he could not tell, or would not.

Its name was Cirith Ungol, a name of dreadful rumour. Aragorn could perhaps have told them that name and its significance; Gandalf would have warned them. But they were alone, and Aragorn was far away, and Gandalf stood amid the ruin of Isengard and strove with Saruman, delayed by treason. Yet even as he spoke his last words to Saruman, and the palantír crashed in fire upon the steps of Orthanc, his thought was ever upon Frodo and Samwise, over the long leagues his mind sought for them in hope and pity.

Maybe Frodo felt it, not knowing it, as he had upon Amon Hen, even though he believed that Gandalf was gone, gone for ever into the shadow in Moria far away. He sat upon the ground for a long while, silent, his head bowed, striving to recall all that Gandalf had said to him. But for this choice he could recall no counsel. Indeed Gandalf's guidance had been taken from them too soon, too soon, while the Dark Land was still very far away. How they should enter it at the last Gandalf had not said. Perhaps he could not say. Into the stronghold of the Enemy in the North, into Dol Guldur, he had once ventured. But into Mordor, to the Mountain of Fire and to Barad-dûr, since the Dark Lord rose in power again, had he ever journeyed there? Frodo did not think so. And here he was a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate. But he had taken it on himself in his own sitting-room in the far-off spring of another year, so remote now that it was like a chapter in a story of the world's youth, when the Trees of Silver and Gold were still in bloom. This was an evil choice. Which way should he choose? And if both led to terror and death, what good lay in choice?

...Frodo stood up..."I wish we had a thousand oliphaunts with Gandalf on a white one at their head," he said. "Then we'd break a way into this evil land, perhaps. But we've not; just our own tired legs, that's all. Well, Sméagol, the third turn may turn the best. I will come with you."