WHAT'S IN A NAME #2

HERE I AM...camped in a motel in Horseheads (NY)
Horseheads? 'How did a town get a name like that?' you might well ask. It all goes back to the American Revolutionary War and 1779. After performing incredible service for their military masters, the worn out pack-horses of Major-General John Sullivan were put to rest in this place. The town is a memorial to their service.

Well then, How about 'Painted Post'? There was (and perhaps still is) a painted post. It was a sort of totem pole on which the local indigenous tribe set out their victories over their enemies. When Europeans came to the area, it became a trading post and later a village.

Painted Post and Horseheads form an entrance to the beautiful region of western New York known as the Finger Lakes, a half-dozen or so long, narrow, and deep lakes left over from the heavy glaciation of the last Ice Age, like so many fingers of a giant hand. Beyond is the larger town of Corning and I am at a loss just now to tell you how that name came about.

My home land, Australia, has some odd town names. How about 'Gumly Gumly', or 'Wogga Wogga',or 'Woolloomooloo'? I lived for two and a half years in a coastal town called 'Warrnambool', an Australian Aboriginal name meaning 'meeting of three rivers'. A few years back, I lived in a place where three rivers meet (the Yakima, Columbia, and Snake rivers), but this mighty triple confluence was completely overlooked and the towns instead are merely named 'The Tri-Cities' (Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland).

Nearby is a lovely town called 'Walla Walla' but I have not yet run to earth what that means. Some say an ancient Native American appellation.

Anyway, here I am on the verge of the next adventure. Sanity has, to some degree (admittedly unusual for me), overtaken me. By now you will be accustomed to my slight penchant for starting down a road only to discover that it is not quite what I had anticipated and then seeking a better path. I had thought this would be the area in which I would build the 'perfect ecological cabin'. Consultations with an architect, coupled with a new appreciation of the difficulties of the project, not to mention the cost, all led me to consider the alternate: purchase of an existing house and working to make it energy efficient. For now at least, the second approach is much the more cost effective. So I am house hunting, and seeking temporary shared accommodation. Not quite three balls in the air but it does feel like that at times.

The 'eye of the needle' experience has transformed into a labyrinth. The Navajo/Hopi have an emblem that looks rather like a squarish helical maze, in plan view. It represents a young man's journey. I am in there, I think, but towards the end with some way yet to go.