The power in a name
IMAGINE SCALING A PEAK so intimidating that it was called El Capitan, a name ringing of conquest, conferred by the Mariposa Battalion, an Indian-killing militia, in the mid-1800s. Imagine the rush of surveying Yosemite Valley from high atop it. “I wanted to test myself against El Cap,” said Alex Honnold, the only climber to free solo the 3,000-foot cliff, in an April 2018 TED talk. “It represented true mastery.”
But another story of El Capitan strikes a different tone. Settler accounts say that the Southern Sierra Miwuk, for whom Yosemite is home, originally called it Measuring-Worm Stone. Two brothers were trapped atop it, and only the lowly inchworm, or measuring worm, could scale the sheer granite cliff to rescue them. It’s a story about patience, sacrifice, smallness — and, of course, resilience. The humble inchworm is a far cry from a conquistador mastering a subjugated peak.
Place names and the stories behind them define how we perceive and connect to
