Place Names

I set out from the sea heading up the Neck and through the Sneak.  The high tide passed an hour or so ago but the current is still light.  It is a beautiful spring day - warm, mostly sunny and with a light wind coming down the river.

The Osprey count looks to be about 40 percent.  Some of the nests have pairs busy refurbishing their abode with new sticks.  Some of the nest boxes are bare showing that the mated couple hasn't returned.  Great Egrets are back and in the winter-stomped spartina I can spot a half dozen at good distance with no trouble at all.

The view from Bailey Creek (it's real name)

Nearing the Big Bends but still 300 yards below, I spot several large dark birds at the edge of the first bend.  They move too quick to be Canada Geese and they are entirely in the wrong place to be Wild Turkeys.  I get the binoculars and find that they are, in fact, a half dozen white tail deer and that they aren't on the shoreline but instead, another 300 yards back wading where the marsh and forest meet.  Above the bends I find a half dozen Yellow Legs working over the stomped spartina.

Deer disappearing

Lately, I've been thinking about place names in natural settings.  Before I wade into this, one of my all time favorite names is Ice Crackin.  It is a lake that was on our summer Boy Scout canoe trips.  It's not Lake Ice Crackin or Ice Crackin Lake, it's just Ice Crackin.  It's delicious in that you almost have to "belong" to get it.  

Yellow Legs

Back to the East River -  The Big Bends, the Sneak, the Gravel Flats and Pocket Knife Corner are names in this river that pretty much only I can attach to a particular feature.  I created them to keep track of my observations as my world is much more micro than the government map world.  They seem appropriate to me, definitely more appropriate than many of the official honorific names that the government bestows on places.  Denali becoming Mt. McKinley because President McKinley looked favorably on mining is an example of poor naming.  Of course, it has since officially reverted to Denali as it should be.  Out west in Union Bay where I started this whole canoe journal thing, I named a good number of features to keep my observations orderly.  There was Number 1 Island, Number 2 Island, Broken Island, Birch Island, the Lunch Counter, West Lodge, Hidden Lodge, and Keg Island.  I changed names on some others, Foster Island became the Burial Island as it had been a Native American burial site.  The Ship Canal, which had been a portage route with a Duwamish name that translated into "crossing over place" became the Crossing Under Place.  And that leads to how places become known by names.  Google, in it's massive and somewhat sloppy effort to map the world with satellite images, adopted the names, Number 2 Island, Broken Island and Birch Island, even though I informed them not to do that.  In time, Broken Island made its way into a Masters Degree dissertation and then into Wikipedia.  I suspect it is permanent.  Number 1 Island was left out, which makes Number 2 Island look silly.  Broken Island was named because at high water a 3 ft wide channel develops cutting the island in half.  Birch Island simply had 3 small paper birches growing on it.  Keg Island is where I retrieved a beer keg while cleaning the marsh, and the Lunch Counter was a favorite spot for Bald Eagles to eat Coots.

Approaching Pocket Knife Corner

I paddle up to and just passed the Stagecoach Crossing, which is know as Bear House Hill Road, which is a fine enough name as well.  I return from there riding the ebb current and catching a tail wind for much of the way