There are six families with homes or small farms on the primitive, country lane where Leah and I live. The lane is gravel, maybe 3/4 of a mile long, and maintained, quite informally, by the folks who live out here.
The lane is humble -- so humble that, for the 15 years we have lived here, it has had no name.
Recently, however, the county sent a letter to everyone who lives on our lane, stating that this no-name situation needs to be rectified. The letter said that the neighbors could get together and propose a name (subject to county approval.) Or the county would choose a name for us, and we’d be stuck with it.
We wondered: Would some county landuse/planner-type come out, look around at the six homes, and decide to name our lane “Poverty Hollow”? Or maybe “Recluse Road”? We neighbors decided that we’d better take on the naming responsibilities ourselves.
And so one evening a couple of weeks ago four families came together to brainstorm monikers for our lane (two families couldn’t make it, but said that anything we came up with would be fine with them.) We chatted about the character, the feeling of where we live. We made lists of the trees that tower over our houses (words like Fir, Evergreen, and Maple were suggested.) We also talked about animals, both domestic and wild, that live around us, so coyote was added to our list; and we wrote down the names of the horse called Wildfire, and the neighborhood dog, Yogi...though we doubted the county would approve of “Yogi Lane.”
In the end, we all agreed that the spring peepers that serenade us on mild evenings are a wonderful part of life where we live, so we settled on the name “Frog Song Lane.”
Leah and I came home from the neighborhood meeting and I stood outside the barn, looking through the barn doors at the sweet-faced goat, Pumpkin. It was my job now to explain to Pumpkin that, though she is without a doubt queen of both barn and pasture at our place, the neighbors had nevertheless given a polite thumbs-down to my suggestion that we name the neighborhood lane “Pumpkin Place.”
