Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
I was thinking today how Americans name mountains things like "Mt. Raineer, Mt. Stuart, Mt. Daniel, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood" etc, after the guy who might have climbed or logged it first.You kind of have to love the place inspite of dead boringness of the names.
Contrast that to... almost every other place in the world, where mountains are named things like Yulongxueshan, or Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. So named because it looks like the ridges on a dragon's back. Revered to the extent that only one group has ever been given permission to climb the [very high - 18400 ft] peak.
Here's some photos, I probably already posted them here but oh well, here they are again.
Contrast that to... almost every other place in the world, where mountains are named things like Yulongxueshan, or Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. So named because it looks like the ridges on a dragon's back. Revered to the extent that only one group has ever been given permission to climb the [very high - 18400 ft] peak.
Here's some photos, I probably already posted them here but oh well, here they are again.
posted by tmm at
2:54 PM
10 Comments:
Tim: Your pictures make me miss climbing! -- love dad
Yeah heh heh... well I kind of want to climb it now. Can you send me an email on how Panama is right now?
Those are really fantastic pictures. The mountains are so rugged and wild looking...hrb
How much do you think our mountians have lame names because when they were named they weren't part of our culture, but are named by explorers moving beyond our culture?
i'd put a little money on that idea, matt.
Maybe you could elaborate Matt, I'm not sure if I understood that. I think part of the problem is we don't have any interesting/phantastical American folk lore to draw from. We inherited plenty of folk-lore from the countries we all migrated from, but we associate them with different locations. To try and name a mountain in the cacades "King Arthur's Seat" would sound ridiculous because of this. So, either you have to be creative and name things based on likenesses (like the "sleeping lady" by Leavenworth which is a shockingly realistic silhouette of a sleeping lady) or just name it after whoever climbed it first.
Yeah, that's more or less what I mean. When say Mt. Ranier was named, there were probably no white people living in the area. They needed a way to refer to "that really tall mountian." But they didn't know the mountian.
But in most societies, the names develop as the people live around them, and get to know them. So American mountians are named like American children--what is a nifty place holder for that person; where as elsewhere, they were named like Abraham "he has been faithful, and so he is the father of many nations". People have gotten to know the mountian before slapping a label onto it, so their names are more Entish.
How pretty! It reminds me a bit of the Zagros mountains between Iraq and Iran. They are not nearly as high but have that same shape, like the points on the back of a dragon.
That's the kind of view I'd like to have from my window in the morning as I'm fixing breakfast, lunch, dinner...mom
forgot to say...fantastic photos tim.
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