Nothing here threatens Brainardsville except excess geography. Readers may encounter extinct waterways, speculative serpent routes, academically approved pond names, mischievous little nippers, and the discovery that Lidar can find what neighbors routinely misplace.
BRAINARDSVILLE is still here, although it appears the country about us has lately been discovered over again.—Prof. David Franzi, formerly of SUNY Plattsburgh, has been looking into the great lakes of water left here when the ice went away upward of 13,000 years ago. By means of Lidar the old beaches, deltas, channels and other marks can now be followed through woods and farms where no water has been within the memory of anybody now living.—The professors consequently think some of the ancient lakes ought to have new names that are older, and this has given encouragement to several persons nearer home who have always believed there were not names enough on the map.—Upper Chateaugay Lake is accordingly to be called Lake Gitaskog, while Lower Chateaugay Lake has been put down for Little Nipper Lake. We understand the latter commemorates the smaller and more troublesome descendants of the old lake serpent, which are chiefly noted for taking hold of a person by the toes when he has gone farther into the water than good judgment warrants.—The large animal itself has lately received the learned name Magni Serpentes Craniodontes. We do not know who supplied the Latin. Probably nobody who has met it.—It is further reported that the serpent came into these parts in glacial times by an underground passage from Lake Champlain, through Chazy Lake and Bradley Pond, and thence into the Narrows. This route is much shorter than some roads now in use, provided a person is a serpent.—Bradley Pond has also been renamed Flying Headwater Pond, the petition having been approved, we are told, by the downstate professors. The pond has made no objection so far as heard from.—There is some satisfaction in learning that science can now find an old beach beneath a field, an abandoned waterfall in the woods, and a river that has not run for several thousand years.
We have people here who cannot find the axe after dinner.—We hope the new names will give satisfaction. Lake Gitaskog is a handsome name, Flying Headwater Pond has enterprise about it, and Little Nipper Lake ought to keep barefoot boys informed without the expense of another sign.—If the professors continue until every vanished lake, old channel, serpent hole and glacial mud puddle has been properly christened, Northern New York will soon have more geography than country. BELZORAM.
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What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?