The Elkhorn Vale

Walt Whitman

A few months ago I spoke with my good buddy PJWB about documenting some of my occasional travels outside of the courthouse collecting that I usually post about. After all, we wanted this site to have as much information about Kentucky as possible. So it seemed like it was high time for that thing that PJWB loves: a BRAND NEW HASHTAG!

From here on out, I (NRK) will post on travels not relating to courthouses using the #ElkhornVale tag.

The term comes from Leaves of Grass, Whitman's famous poem. In context, Whitman was accounting for his one-ness with others of this nation - in his own perhaps overly romantic way. Here is a portion the passage:

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff
that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same
and the largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant
and hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the
limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier,
Badger, Buckeye . . .

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.

Anyway, I hope to provide some interesting content over the next few weeks.