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Visible from my home is one of the most emblematic mountains of Vermont: Camel's hump. Like maple syrup, its visage has become synonymous with Vermont, and was even minted onto a collectors quarter of the 50 states. One of the founding fathers of Vermont of Revolutionary days, Ethan Allen, is reputed to have dubbed it "Camel's Rump." Allen, was known to have spent as many days in the pub as he did fighting the British or New Yorkers, and fortunately it did not stick. The Native Americans gave it a much more dignified name, something like "the resting place," a place to stop along their journeys. Samuel De Champlain, the European Explorer who named the lake for himself, called it after a visage in a family crest - "Le Lion Couchant"-the resting lion. To my eye it looks much more like a humpback whale. From a modern vantage it's hard to imagine that Vermont has had much to do for some time, with camels, lions, or whales, but my very town, Charlotte Vt. is noted for the Charlotte Whale which is a fossiled specimen found in a farmer's field in the 1840's. About the same time, most people here would had been lighting their lamps with whale oil. There had even been a whaling ship dubbed the "Vermont." Over 10,000 years ago, Lake Champlain was once part of a great inland saltwater sea, and there were whales, in these parts. There is even a historical connection between Vermont and Cape Cod MA, where I have taken many photographs. Samuel de Champlain in the 1600s explored the waters around the cape, just as he explored the waters of Vermont's great lake, and he would have seen many the whales by the cape in that epoch . Lest I be accused of hanging with Ethan Allen in the pub, If Champlain had had a little more imagination might we have had "Humpback Mt." or "Camel's Humpback?"