Its heft surprised me. I thought Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, was going to be a little guidebook, not a massive textbook of place terms. Which is a good thing. The other surprise is that it actually seems useful, for those of us in the business of describing places. Like this one, in Brooklyn, "Prospect Heights":
"Heights is a general term for an elevated landform that provides a vantage point from which to view the surrounding countryside...In a suburban context, heights carry a kind of middle-class pretension or snobbery, as if higher ground, real or nominal, makes a better neighborhood."
Or, "desire path":
A close look at any city park or green will typically reveal footpaths that break away from paved walks, trails that countless pedestrians have worn into the grass. Such a trail is a desire path: the route people have chosen to take across an open place, marking a human pattern upon a landscape.
A few more are here. I heard about the book after listening to Barry Lopez interviewed on Forum.
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