Hollers, Gorges, Gullies and Such

 

 Trillium Holler

 

Last weekend, we had 8 inches of rain.  The branch that runs through the holler dividing my farm from the farm next door was roaring with water for the next 24 hours. (We say holler, not hollow, where I live.) My friend Clay, who has been working on my house for the past year, came over to work on Sunday morning and remarked that the water sure was loud running down the gorge beside the house.

I said, “Clay, that’s not a gorge.  It’s a holler.”  And so began one of those long, fairly pointless discussions we frequently have, this one being about the difference in a gorge and a holler.  Such discussions are one of the reasons this remodeling job has lasted over a year.

He insisted that a holler has to be big enough to build a little house in and plant a garden.  His wife’s folks lived in a holler.   What I have is a gorge.  I told him that no one around here says gorge.  And what he is talking about is a valley.  I had to stop and go to church at that point.

After church, I met friends for lunch and, needing reinforcements,  asked them what the difference in a gorge and a holler is.  The answer I got from Danny was that a gorge was something that water cut a path through and had real steep sides and a holler had more sloping sides.  That made perfect sense to me and I agreed.  I have a holler with a little branch running through it.

On Monday morning, I gave this piece of information to Clay and the discussion continued.  He still insisted that you had to be able to build a little house in a holler and there is no place in mine to build even a very tiny house.  Since the only way to the bottom is either on foot or at your peril down what’s left of a very steep little road with a very deep ditch on one side, I can’t see wanting to build a house down there anyway.  But that’s beside the point.  So, during lunch with another group of friends, I posed my question to them.  What is the difference in a gorge and a holler?  They agreed with Danny’s definition and expanded the definition that the sides of a gorge would probably be solid rock.  I said, “Like the Grand Canyon.”  My friend Micky said, “No, that’s a canyon.”  I had to agree.  The difference in a gorge and a canyon doesn’t interest me at this time.

On Tuesday morning, I reported my newest findings to Clay and he said, “Well whatever it is, it sure had a lot of water running through it Sunday.  Where does all that water some from?”

 In all innocence, I said, “It comes from the gully.” 

“What gully?” he asked with a puzzled look.

 “The gully that runs into the holler,” I said.  “That’s where the branch starts.”   The look on Clay’s face was priceless.

 “That’s not a branch,” he said.  “It’s a stream.”  At that point I realized that we were about to have another pointless discussion about differences between gullies and hollers, branches and streams.  I had to admit he had a point because it had never occurred to me to wonder why we call the upper part of this geographical feature a gully and the lower part that runs by my house we call the holler.  Come to think of it, when does a ditch, like that one at the side of the steep little road going down to the holler, become a gully? 

So, at lunch Tuesday, I reported on our new discussion.  “At what point does a gully become a holler?” I asked.  No one seemed to have an answer, and then Alice mentioned ravines and gulches.  I refused to go there.

Then she said, “A holler has trees and wildflowers in it, but a gully doesn’t.”  I thought that was a pretty good dividing point but before I could say so, my friend David said, “You and Clay have too much spare time on your hands.”  So, I still don’t know exactly what the difference is in a gully and holler.  I would ask Alexa, but I’m afraid of what she might think.  I can’t wait to find out where this goes Wednesday morning when Clay comes to work.  Come to think of it, we haven’t done any real work on the house since last Friday.