Thursday, February 11, 2010

All that Glitters

When I first bought that land up on the Ridge in Nitida, it was the hill that I was after - the land I already had was on the Euclidia side down that hill a ways, and ad parcels were still rampant on mainland - the major motivation for that purchase, when I discovered the entire Ridge was for sale, was to avoid having a line of highly prominent and visible advertisements spoiling the landscape above my little place. Walking along the crest of that hill for the first time, I came upon the "saddle" where it dips a bit - having joined SL for the music, and without having any previous intentions of actually running a live music venue - I felt that spot seemed to be crying for a venue. This was all before windlight, but I noticed the sky, and the sun, the altitude of the clouds, and their relation to the hill - some of those things I have no control over and that seem to add to the ambience of the place - and began to dream - or rather, free-associate, beginning with some questions.

What does the name mean?

The sim was named Nitida, and while trying to think of what else might make the Ridge special, I wondered what that might mean, if anything, to anyone. Being mainland, there are a lot of things there is no control over, including the name of the sim. It turns out that "nitida" is Latin for "shining," "bright," or "glittering" (Latin dictionary: http://www.latin-dictionary.org/nitida )

Why would someone name a piece of land "Nitida"?

When people come across new land in the real world, why do they give it the names that they do? Some name a new place they settle in after the old one they just left for nostalgic reasons. Some dub a new place they come across after something they see in the new place.

So what might be found in a hill that would make someone name it "shining" or
"glittering" ?

By now I guess you can see where my thinking went, when I researched photos of gold ore to discover that it's frequently found with quartz (so is iron pyrite) and took textures of granite and photos of quartz and pyrite that I found and blended them all into the rock textures that I ended up using all over the hill. There is more quartz and granite than anything, but if you look closely you'll see the glittering specks. Which ones are gold and which ones fool's gold? Hard to tell ;-)

Since adding the rocks, there have been trees and grasses and flowers, a couple of other "venues" and Twome's original tower that came with the ridge and that has a permanent place here. And there are seasons - but the pond in the saddle of the hill, *that* must be volcanically heated, since the area immediately around it is always green :-). As well as gold - that pond was my first venue tip jar, and still functions as such for those who remember. On the pebbles at the bottom of the pond you will see the coins, including some glittery gold, that have been tossed into the water.

The real treasure in this place is the music and the comradeship that happens here, during and outside of actual events - that goes without saying, but that and the magnetism that draws people here from time to time are not what prompted this reminiscence.

What prompted it is turtly fun. I wasn't even thinking about the Ridge when I hatched, as I do now and again, way more Petable Turtle eggs than I should, sometimes for obscure reasons that I can't remember, other times because they have special characteristics that I know I'll want to keep. I wasn't thinking about the Ridge when I named a glowshine "Foolsgold" - not just for his colour but for the foolishness of hatching yet another turtle. I wasn't thinking about the Ridge when I realized that there was a half dozen metallic gold eggs in my attractor, all shinies, whose father was Foolsgold and whose mother was a turtle I'd somehow missed naming - so I named her "Mother Lode."


Pretty as these eggs are, I wasn't thinking about the Ridge when I decided to trade in a lot of my existing turtles, and since Foolsgold and Mother Lode don't really fit into my breeding programme, they were slated to get traded too, after a period in the sale pond.

Well, they're not going in the sale pond. They're not getting traded. I finally realized where they belong. They, and the glittering nuggets they produce, are now a part of the Ridge magic, as they have joined a couple of 7Seas Koi in the pond in the saddle on the hill.


It's fun that the first 2 eggs laid in their new home were not only shines, but the first glowshines they have produced :-)