"and gives airy nothing a local habitation and a name." (Shakespeare)
Our street sign is missing. Okay, it’s been stolen. Again.
I sort of understand why sign-snatchers might be attracted to certain road names – Sweet Speed Drive, for example, or Deep Hole. But a lane named after a common woodland plant? Hard to figure.
Indeed, our lane’s name was one of the least appealing things about this place when we bought it seven years ago. But back when all the previously identifying fire road numbers gave way to road names, as mandated by the state, my husband and I were still summer renters. We didn’t get in on the one-time naming opportunity afforded property owners, efforts that by the following season were manifested in the official blue metal street signs that for most of us familiar with lifestyles elsewhere veer way too close to the suburban.
Up went the predictable: family names like Stacy Circle, Caleb’s Way, Walker’s Point. Other names highlighted topographical features. Some – Sunny Crest and Deer Haven – reached for the poetic. I heard of one homeowner who was disappointed to learn his name choice had already been taken. He’d been so certain On The Rocks would doubly pertain – to his cottage’s location on a massive granite ledge and his appreciation of a perfect gin martini. I also have to believe clues to a state of mind when name applications were due or to the issue itself reside in Bottom Line Road or Unnecessary Lane.
Years ago, when I first came to the island, neither a street name or fire road number would have made much difference to anyone other than the volunteer fire department. No one was looking for me. No one here knew who I was. That first summer, I came alone to a rented cottage perched on a tidal cove. The owner’s sister lived next door but during those initial two weeks I never met her. I spent much of my time on the cove-facing deck, field guide in hand, and, despite their indifference, made acquaintance with deftly probing Lesser Yellow Legs and high-stepping black-bellied plovers. It was there I saw my first in-the-wild fox when crows swooped out of the cove’s corseting spruce and chased it across the mudflats. Not so hard to identify was the bald eagle that several times looped overhead although it took a bit more time to identify by name the osprey circling its eagle-look-alike nest on Little Crow Island. As if with needle and thread, they each began to bind me, stitch me into the fabric of this place. Later, too, I got to know the sister, learning first, of course, her name.
In her memoir about moving from Manhattan to a small town in upstate New York, Le Anne Schreiber observes that for a period of time, often years, a newcomer is likely to be known by “an evolving set of identifying labels.” The same seems to hold true here. One of my early identifying labels may well have been: Woman Who’s Renting Jon’s House. Even now, after seven years of owning this house, I’m still known to some folks as the Woman Who Lives In The Robinson House. More generally, I’m the Woman Who Writes Poetry. My husband Bob has become the Fellow Who Rides A Red Motor Scooter (a label uniquely his, given that, best I can tell, he’s the only person on the island with a red Vespa.)
Such identifying labels tell more about a person than just their name. About places, too. Eggemoggin is the unusual-sounding name of the stretch of water known as a reach over which our island cable bridge spans, but in its native Passmaquoddy, Place of the Great Fish Weir offers historical reference and meaning.
In name alone, Native American names often confer meaning on things and places. Apaches, I’ve read, have long been minimal conversationalists. In my essay “Names,” I reference Keith Basso who’s extensively worked with Apaches and who notes that, in their native language, Apaches speak primarily with names, precise place-names that are more like guides pointing to specific locations. In them, pictures are suggested, images our imaginations can work with. Like, for example: “Trail extends across a long ridge with alder trees.” Or: “Cluster of big walnut tree stands bushing out.”
According to Basso, Apaches view place names that don’t give pictures to the mind as useless, since, in part, image-conferring names are used to stand in for stories. They refer to what at a location happens or has happened. Place Where Wind Gathers. Or: Place of Falling Trees.
On this island, a somewhat similar version of naming exists. Sure, we may know the name Perez Cross Road but for a few of us living close by, an altogether different name memorializes what happened there, and, Apache-like, summons up pictures – Road Where Running Dog Punctured Artery and Left a Trail of Blood. Given that the dog was our beloved Ben, I can appendix: Road Where Hair-Raising Ride to Mainland Vet Began.
Closer to home – literally – I can’t help but wonder what choice I might’ve made for our lane’s name. Sticking with the native landscape, but rather than taking my cue from bunchberry, I’d have likely focused instead on our massive, magisterial red oak. But I suspect the state may have balked at a name like: Place Where Tree Of Big Arms Shelters House.