So, midway through a recent walk through the forest, my phone notified me that I had done it, I had destroyed the one ring. Sauron had fallen, Middle Earth was saved. All of that.

The cause for these notifications was an admittedly silly but truly fun (and, to me, inspiring) phone app. The app marked my progress through Middle Earth as, in my case, I walked around my home in Berlin. It used my phone’s step counter, so it counted the steps whereever I took them, and for more than a year.

The app converted my step counter steps to Hobbit steps from Hobbiton, where I was apparently a neighbor to someone going under the name of Underhill and who was off on a similar mission, with a different ring. For both of us, the destination was Mount Fire, which the app makers had the full rights to Tolkien’s works might have been slightly different.

Now, in the books, Frodo and Sam completed this same walk in something like 7 months. It is not a short walk. From round green door to the ledge overlooking the caldera, it’s 2,865 kilometers, or 1,780 miles. Finishing that walk, in bits and drabs, up and down the aisles of the grocers, or strolling through the forest wondering how close I am to 10,000 steps, took me a bit more than 14 months.

But, the truth is, this trek is one I’ve really been on for most of my life. Before the app, I just didn’t have a good way of measuring it.

In many ways, Tolkien’s works are what forged me. Through his works, I fell in love with reading. I fell in love with the idea of adventure. I fell in love with idea of writing, and telling stories.

His works get a good share of the credit, or blame, for my career in journalism. That career sent me travelling around the world. I ventured into war zones, where it quickly became clear that death in battle is not heroic, it’s just sad. Unlike at Helm’s Deep, war instead of bringing out the best of us, I realized pretty quickly that war focuses almost entirely on bringing out our worst demons. Tolkien, who knew war, and a horrible, horrible bit of war, very well, knew this fact well. As Tolkien notes in The Two Towers “It was Sam’s first view of battle of men against men, and he did not like it much… He wondered what the man’s name was, and where he came from, and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats led him on the long march from his home.”

It’s hard not to hear those words when looking down on the faces of dead young men.

Just as the Lord of the Rings was mostly about adventure, and friendship, my career wasn’t all war. I’ve counted up, and found that I’ve worked in something like 67 countries. Of course, most of those places I’ve visited because something has gone horribly wrong. But I’d visit, and write, and hope that somehow, a bit of light on a dark subject might make a difference.

Not sure it ever did. In Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I like to think it would have.

After that career, I continued on Tolkien’s trek, turning to writing fiction.

The adventure does go ever on.

So, recently, upon reaching my virtual but very true goal of having reached the end of my phone app journey, I had a moment of inner smiles. There was a moment of thinking I’d shared, in some stupid way, in the adventure I’d always wanted to share in. I did the math. The walk is the equivalent of a walk straight from my house to Marrakech, if I could walk on water, which in the app I guess I can. Marrakech seemed appropriate, as it is where some of the steps on this journey were recorded.

However, what soon became clear to me is just as I have long believed that the words “Well, I’m back” are the saddest words ever penned, there really wasn’t much joy in the journey being complete. The journey is what makes life worth living.

So, you know, I hit “Start over.” Right now, I’m back in the fields of the Shire, and quite happy about that.