Winter 2017 LOCALadk Magazine 31
LOCALadk
Being the author of two place-name books, I was of course
attracted to the names themselves, no matter what type of
feature the name was attached to or what that feature actu-
ally looked like on the ground. There are Bullpout Pond, Par-
adox Creek, Spectacle Ponds, and Montcalm Point, named
respectively for a type of fish, water flowing in a contrar y
direction, a shape that looks like a pair of eyeglasses, and a
French officer. And there are Desolate Swamp, Grizzle Ocean
Mountain, Horseshoe Pond, and Spuytenduivel Brook, which
are named after a remote location, a logger who caught fish
in his own personal "ocean" of a pond, the cur ving shape of
a shoreline, and a Dutch term translating to, "in spite of the
devil." Nearly all of the names confirmed what I had written
within my first place-name book: "Behind ever y named fea-
ture there's a stor y, and the stor y's usually pretty good."
My pursuit wasn't singularly a series of one-, two-, and
three-day trips – or at least it never felt like that – because it
was about the experience, the journey. My hiking challenge
feels personal and special because it's different from ever y-
one else's type of challenge and because it's a love affair. So,
in the end, what did I find after hiking a few hundred miles
and following scores of compass bearings to swamps, ridge-
lines, mountains, meadows, and streams – with no hope for
accompanying recognition, rewards, or sense of community?
That's easy. I found wild land. But more importantly, I found
true love.
