2 years ago

0:00:00 Chapter 1
0:10:17 Chapter 2
0:20:03 Chapter 3

"Single". What kind of a given name is "Single"? Bizarre. Ah well, as a certain Lieutenant in Catch-22 would say, "It's Single's name, sir."

Another story that's a bit hard to place. The Bitterroot Mountains are in Montana and Idaho, and there is a Salmon River at the south end of the Bitterroot Mountains. The Blue Mountain Forest Reserve is (or was, I'm unclear if it still exists) in eastern Oregon, and the Blue Mountains generally are in Oregon and a little bit of Washington.

There's a Hampden in Colorado (now part of Denver), and a Croydon in Utah. Now we know Theunis has to travel to get to Croydon, so it is possible they are referring to the city in Utah. But clearly Hampden, CO cannot be the Hampden referenced, as they say the Salmon River is southeast of Hampden, but that is impossible given the various locations listed above.

The Salmon River does connect to the Snake River, which runs through the Blue Mountains. As it happens, there is a Hells Canyon along the course of the Snake River, and the Nez Perce were the first inhabitants of the area. It is relatively close to the Salmon River, and is very likely what the text calls "Hell's Acres". That said, there's no place nearby called Hampden that I can find. Maybe such a town existed a hundred years ago and died off some time since. It was pretty common in those western states back in the day for towns to spring up and die away as gold rushes started up and ended. There was a Hells Canyon gold rush in the 1880s, and maybe a small town of stragglers hung on for another 50 years or so before the town faded away, but that seems unlikely. Most likely, just a place they made up for the story that never really existed.

Just like there was never a pirate "Exer Jones", that is a completely made up name for the story. It is odd that a pirate would build a house in Montana or Idaho or eastern Oregon, which makes me wonder if perhaps the original setting was someplace very different and it was changed during editing. And "Beacon Hill" is obviously a name out of Boston, no doubt transplanted into this story by Lovecraft, who loves to use Beacon Hill in his stories that are set in Boston. It's certainly not a commonly used name anywhere else.

As best I can tell, greaseweed goes by the scientific name of eriodictyon tomentosum, a.k.a. woolly yerba santa. A bit out of place in Oregon or Montana or Idaho - it normally occurs in central to southern California and northern Mexico. Of course, it is entirely possible the authors may have had some other plant in mind that they thought was called that name, or maybe they were just unaware of the range of the plant, being familiar with California, but not the states to its north, so they just assumed. That seems pretty likely.

The pictures used is a photo taken by Rickmouser45 at Hells Canyon National Recreation area, near Heaven's Gate Park. This photo was taken on the Idaho side of the Hells Canyon, looking to the Oregon side of the canyon. This photo is used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en).

The follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/th.aspx

Isn't it amazing that we finally, FINALLY, have a Lovecraft story where the character follows instructions and destroys the Thing (pictures, in this case) without looking at it or otherwise engaging with it. So many of his stories, the characters can't help themselves and do what they are instructed not to do. It's nice to finally have someone willing to play along and not screw things up :)

Loading comments...