Place names
Some things are in the eye of the beholder as I say. From my experience landforms fit into this. I live in a province that has no mountains. In fact we rarely get around to using the term hill. Flatland. But there are several places in the province that have names that reflect mountains. Are these simply memories of the people that moved there because they do not qualify in terms of topography. We found the same thing to be true in the second province that I lived in. They had bigger hills. A lot of them. And one close to town was actually called a mount and it probably was substantial to anyone with a horse and cart. But not a true mount. You would not go there to ski nor would you go there to climb with ropes. Just a hill that you could walk up even on the hottest summer day. In my third province there were hills in town. More than a kilometre from top to bottom. And like elsewhere all of those hills had names. Oddly they just called them the hills. And if you had to go up on a summer day on a bicycle you would be grumbling and mumbling under your breath but you would always make it to the top and you would always make it back down. I’ve lived in other places that had true mountains. Nothing to rival the Rockies or there height but true mountains just the same. And the names gave hints but you needed to find a true topographical map to get the statistics. Right now I have the opposite condition. A lot of small ponds that have been given the name of lakes. Not deep or wide or long but more than a puddle. In truth the majority are actually saltwater lagoons. I will be keeping an eye out in future for the veracity of places’ names. Too much room for exaggeration on the part of those who dropped the titles on the map. We have no large forests. No large trees anymore. But I will be watching. The next time that somebody tells me about a giant tree I will be credulous. Or is it incredulous. I must sort that out.
Read the rest of this entry »posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Place names | 377 words
