The promise
For five months the Ring barely moves. Then everything happens in seventeen days.
Bag End, nightfall
On the twenty-third of September, in the year 3018 of the Third Age, a Black Rider comes to Hobbiton at nightfall and asks for Baggins. That same evening, Frodo leaves Bag End with Sam and Pippin. On his way out he overhears the Gaffer telling a strange voice that Mr. Baggins has gone. Tolkien wrote both facts into the same entry of a timetable.
The timetable
That timetable is Appendix B, the Tale of Years. For the six months of the quest, it gives a date every few days. I took every date that puts the Ring-bearer or his companions somewhere and drew it on this map. A solid line means Tolkien gives the date. A dashed line means I’m filling a gap between two of his. The months are the Shire’s, thirty days each, so February has a twenty-ninth and a thirtieth.
Six days to Bree
The first week is crowded. The twenty-fourth: a night with Gildor’s Elves in the Woody End. The twenty-fifth: Farmer Maggot’s, the Ferry after dark, Crickhollow. The twenty-sixth: the Old Forest, then Tom Bombadil’s house, where they stay two nights. The twenty-eighth: a Barrow-wight. The twenty-ninth: the Prancing Pony at Bree, and Strider. Early on the thirtieth, Riders raid the inn and the empty house at Crickhollow in the same night.
Twenty-seven days to the Ford
Then the line stretches. Weathertop on the sixth of October, where the Witch-king’s knife goes into Frodo’s shoulder. The Last Bridge on the thirteenth. Glorfindel finds them on the Road at dusk on the eighteenth, and on the twentieth Frodo crosses the Ford of Bruinen one stride ahead of the Nine. Bag End to the Ford took twenty-seven days.
Sixty-five days
Now watch the clock and the dot. The clock keeps running. The dot stays where it is. The Council of Elrond meets on the twenty-fifth of October, and the Company doesn’t leave until dusk on the twenty-fifth of December. The Ring sits in Rivendell for sixty-five days, more than twice as long as it took to get there.
The mountain says no
Nine walkers go south. They reach Hollin on the eighth of January. On the eleventh and twelfth, snow on Caradhras turns them back. On the thirteenth, wolves attack before dawn, and by nightfall they’re at the West-gate of Moria. The same day, the timetable notes, Gollum begins to follow the Ring-bearer.
Three days underground
Moria takes three days on the timetable. The fourteenth is the night in Hall Twenty-one. The fifteenth is the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Gandalf falls, and here the line splits for the first time. A faint thread goes down into the dark and comes up on the peak of Zirakzigil, where on the twenty-fifth he throws down the Balrog and dies. The rest run out of the Dimrill Gate and reach the Nimrodel late that night.
A month in Lórien
They reach Caras Galadhon on the evening of the seventeenth of January and stay until the sixteenth of February. On the river afterward, Sam looks at the moon and says, “Anyone would think that time did not count in there!” The timetable counts it. On the fourteenth of February, the day of Galadriel’s Mirror, Gandalf comes back to life on the mountain. Three days later an eagle carries him to Lórien. The Company had left the day before.
The tally
Down the Anduin in boats. Sarn Gebir on the twenty-third, where Orcs shoot at them in the dark. The Argonath and Parth Galen on the twenty-fifth. Stop the clock here and count. From Bag End to Parth Galen is a hundred and fifty-four days. Sixty-five of them in Rivendell. Twenty-nine in Caras Galadhon. For more than half of the journey so far, the Ring is sitting still.
The twenty-sixth of February
Then one morning ends all of that. On the twenty-sixth of February, Boromir tries to take the Ring and then dies defending Merry and Pippin. Frodo crosses the river with Sam. Uruk-hai carry Merry and Pippin west. At evening, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli go after them. One line becomes three, and the map needs three clocks.
Seventeen days
This is what surprised me when I drew it. Once Frodo leaves home, The Fellowship of the Ring covers five months. The Two Towers, the whole second volume, starts on this morning and ends on the thirteenth of March, when Orcs carry Frodo into the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Seventeen days. Most of what people remember happens in the last month of a six-month walk.
The fifth of March
The hunters meet Gandalf in Fangorn on the first of March. Edoras on the second. Helm’s Deep on the third. Isengard at noon on the fifth, and that night at Dol Baran, Pippin looks into the palantír. Gandalf takes him and rides for Gondor, and Merry and Pippin come apart. At dusk on that same day, far to the east, Frodo leaves the Black Gate and turns south.
The Dawnless Day
By the tenth of March there are four lines moving at once, and the timetable puts all of them on one day. The Dawnless Day. At Minas Tirith, Pippin watches Gandalf ride out to save Faramir. At Edoras, Merry rides out hidden in front of a rider called Dernhelm. Aragorn crosses the Ringló with the Dead behind him. And at the Cross-roads, Frodo watches the Witch-king lead his army out of Minas Morgul, toward the city where Pippin is standing.
The fifteenth of March
Three of those lines are aimed at one field. On the fifteenth of March, Merry puts his blade into the Witch-king on the Pelennor. Pippin pulls Faramir off his father’s pyre. Aragorn comes up the river in the black ships of Umbar. For one day, six of the eight surviving walkers are on one battlefield or inside the walls behind it. Frodo isn’t. He and Sam are just out of the Tower, heading north along the Morgai, and that morning a wind from the west thins the dark over them.
The bait
The captains decide to march on the Black Gate to keep Sauron’s Eye on them and off the Ring-bearer. The Host of the West leaves the city on the eighteenth, turns north at the Morgul Vale on the nineteenth, and walks toward the Morannon. On the other side of the mountains, Frodo and Sam are walking toward the same end. On the twenty-second they leave the road and turn south for Mount Doom.
The twenty-fifth of March
The twenty-fifth of March. At the Black Gate, Aragorn, Gandalf, Pippin, Legolas and Gimli are surrounded on the slag-hills. In Minas Tirith, Merry is still recovering. At the Sammath Naur, Frodo claims the Ring, and Gollum takes it and falls into the Fire. A hundred and eighty-four days after a Black Rider came asking for Baggins in Hobbiton, three clocks stop on the same date. In the Tale of Years, all of it fits in one entry.
