Backcountry Hiking in Gorgoroth

Jackson Lowell

September 18, 2020

Backcountry Hiking in Gorgoroth

           I’ve always loved waking up in a tent. The first thing you see in the morning is a familiar deer hide ceiling which suppresses the uneasiness felt from rising in a foreign land. Gorgoroth is probably as foreign as it gets for most folks this side of the Misty Mountains.  It is the proverbial Timbuktu; perpetually far away from everything, no matter what corner of the map you find yourself on.

           Today marks three weeks since leaving the king’s land and nearly a month away from my farm and family. The old lady will have to hold things together in my stead, with a little help from the youngins of course. Undoubtedly, I’m dearly missed by the lot of them, but even my smallest understands his dad’s restless soul. Come autumn, they know I need to move; to stretch my legs, and explore the harshest, most rugged terrain offered on this Middle Earth. As soon as the last of the wheat has been harvested, I’m officially on vacation.

           I’ve been going out on my little tramps through the wilderness for nigh on two decades now. Last year, I squirted across the borders of the dead marshes, equipped with a fragrant salve I had acquired from the southern bazaars of Harad, designed to keep the midges and black flies at bay. It was less than effective. A couple of years before that, I hitched a ride north to explore the ruins of Angmar. My hike among the dizzying peaks of Ered Nimrais was an especially treacherous journey, despite being so close to home. However, my most exciting and equally most dangerous adventure thus far is my current pilgrimage across the plains of Gorgoroth. The eventual end goal: reaching the Sea of Nurnen.  

           This ancient body of water, which is, in fact, a vast lake rather than a literal sea, is fed by subterranean run offs from the Ash Mountains to its north and the Mountains of Shadow to its south. It seems the original settlers of this land were not especially creative in naming these surrounding ranges, but having explored them myself, I must admit that their titles are fairly spot-on. It’s rumored that Nurnen’s surrounding banks are some of the only fertile lands in Mordor, but very few can validate this claim. Indeed, there is only a handful of living men that have felt the lake’s chilling kiss. I would find myself amongst elite company, should I reach my ultimate destination.

           Lately, my favorite places to explore have all been to the east. There’s something overwhelmingly thrilling about entering the enemy’s old stomping grounds; a land that until only a couple centuries ago, was swarming with all manner of foul creatures that would happily have devoured me alive and picked their teeth with my bones. These days, the east is mostly deserted. You can walk for hours without seeing another living soul, save for the occasional rat or carrion crow. Sometimes, you might stumble upon the crumbling remains of an old orc hut or some artifact of crude weaponry, but anything remotely valuable has long since been pillaged. For the most part, you are left happily alone with nothing to distract you from your thoughts. This is what I love about visiting Mordor. Others might see it as a barren wasteland, devoid of all beauty and light, filled with hidden remnants of evil around every corner, but not me. I see the territory, rather, as an escape from the norm; a little excitement in an otherwise quiet life.   

           Because Gorgoroth is surrounded by dense mountain ranges on all sides, the ecosystem is effectively segregated from its surrounding regions. These great walls of rock keep intermingling with the outside world to a minimum, while simultaneously penning in the interior microclimate. The result is a unique collection of flora that can’t be found anywhere else. The spear-nose cactus and the red deservio weed were only discovered by the men of the west a couple dozen years ago, and are unable to grow in any other environment. Indeed, even the annual weather cycles are drastically different from that of Gondor’s despite it being no more than a hundred leagues away. Warm winds blow down from the surrounding hills, drying the plains and turning the valley into an uninhabitable dust bowl. Raging sandstorms are not uncommon. I’ve had more than a few run-ins with suffocating flurries of ash that whip up into disorienting clouds, forcing me to make a hasty shelter under a boulder or in the abandoned den of some rank creature. The heat is relentless. The sun’s face is constantly hidden behind a wispy veil of clouds, and yet, blistering burns on the cheeks and neck are nearly unavoidable. I often rise well before dawn, beginning the day’s trek in the cool morning air. Shady midday siestas are a necessity when the sun is at its height. Endurance is the key to completing this journey. The climate offers only brief windows when safe passage is possible, but I am chipping away at the great expanse day by day.

           Apart from the weather, the most daunting challenge I’ve faced on this epic excursion is procuring enough sustenance to keep myself going. Live game is scarce, so my meals are primarily made-up of the tough desert vegetation that grows here and there.  The prickly agave plant has been a staple of my diet for the last couple of weeks. Underneath its thorny exterior hide lies a sweet flesh filled with many essential nutrients. They’re not hard to find if you know where to look, and the burning diarrhea they cause is not unbearable. Occasionally, I’ll luck out and score myself a true feast: the rotting corpse of some indiscriminate ungulate. These prizes are rare, but they can be spotted quite easily by the circling buzzards that surround them. Once you scavenge any remaining tissue and pick off all the maggots, the meat doesn’t taste half bad roasted on an evening spit.  

           Although the acquisition of food can be difficult, it is not the chief provision I worry about finding. The true resource I covet out here, more valuable than a mountain of gold and jewels, is water, or liquid life, as I like to call it. Drinkable reservoirs are few and far between in this desolate valley. Without a keen sense of survival and some insider knowledge of the terrain, terminal dehydration is inevitable. Before my first outing into the Land of Death, as the surrounding settlements have so affectionately dubbed it, I was sure to consult an established wanderer from the area with ample years of experience around the outer plains of Gorgoroth. Manwé, an elder of the western Ash Mountain clans, has been scouting the desert since he was a strapping young man. Although he has never quite made it as far east as Nurnen, many of his solo journeys, which often span multiple months or even years, have seen uninterrupted stretches away from his village and its systems of obtaining water. He has often been forced to get quite creative and resourceful. Some of his stories of survival seem a little farfetched, but he did give me more than a few choice insights. Namely, not to search in vain for water above ground; it hardly exists in Gorgoroth. Instead, you must tap into the basins that lie waiting just beneath the earth’s crust. The first step is finding low land that collects water when the occasional rainstorms roll through the valley. Nearby patches of cactus and other resilient desert plants are usually a good sign. Then, with an intricate system of thin bamboo piping hammered a few meters into the ground, you can siphon a few liters of silty water to refill your skins. I keep the supplies for the operation folded up in my pack. It is by far the heaviest gear I’m taking with me, but also the most essential. I owe Manwé a debt of gratitude for all the advice he has so graciously passed on to me; advice that has saved my life and healed my parched, cracking lips more times than I can count.

           Folks often ask me, upon returning to the civilized countryside, why I deliberately choose to trade the comfort of my bed for a hard sleep in the dirt; how I could abandon my family for months on end, and go traipse around the wild. My answer is always the same: It’s what I was born to do, what all humans were born to do. Is it not the same pattern of life that primordial man took when they descended out of Númenor and chose to inhabit new lands so many years ago? Perhaps the old legends are forgotten by my kinsmen these days, but not by me. I still remember and pay homage to our ancient bloodlines. Of course, I worry about the state of affairs in my county when I’m away, but I’m sure they can make it without me, at least for a little while. They managed just fine for the last millennia after all.

           As I rouse myself out of bed this morning, the cool breeze blows my tent flap slightly ajar. The opening exposes the terrain ahead of me, previewing the next couple of day’s journey. As I peer out across the endless plains, I can’t help but think of the green fields of the Pelennor from whence I came. I often reminisce about home while on the road, but these thoughts are quickly replaced by the excitement of venturing into the unknown. Who can tell what the next day will bring, if I’ll reach my destination, or if I’ll even survive the journey? It will most definitely be a hard road forward, with perils and pitfalls around every bend, but it’s the only road I know, and I intend to follow it until it eventually claims my body and soul.