Hourglass valley, ribbon fall, gallery forest, and ephemeral creek may not be in standard dictionaries, but they’re terms often used in parts of the United States to denote features of the landscape particular to various places. Writers Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney have gathered more than 800 of these terms and asked well-known authors to research and write short entries about each of them. The result is Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape, a lovely compilation that poses the question: What do we lose if these words are forgotten? This is part of a complete episode.
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