Hank Meals – What’s in a Name


Sunday, February 15, 2:00pm
Nevada Theatre, Nevada City, California
$25 General Admission
$35 Reserved Seating

Local Literature Lurking in a Lucid Landscape
A lively slide slow presentation about our tongue tripping topography

by Hank Meals

Who hasn’t been awed by the simplicity, elegance, mystery and humor of the place names found in the Sierra Nevada? Names like Hornswoggle Creek, Shenanigan Flat, Starvation Bar and Sugarloaf. Naming places allowed us to navigate in the landscape and names for places were probably among the very first words.

Over the past fifty years Hank has photographed and researched many of these places. He couldn’t resist visiting Gates of the Antipodes, or Garden Bar, or Sucker Flat. The relatively new field of experimental geography, as practiced by Hank, definitely includes humor. Whether you’re an artist, writer, walker, or want to be, you will enjoy this presentation.

“A living scholar-worker-poet of overview and underbrush, he’s creating a new way of getting to know nature from inside.”  – GARY SNYDER 2019


Hank Meals was a photojournalist before moving to Nevada County in 1973. In 1975 he was hired as an archaeologist for the Tahoe National Forest where he worked for 13 years. That was the beginning of his immersion in the landscape and culture of the Yuba-Bear River watersheds. His subsequent writings, photographs, slideshows, interpretive hikes and his enthusiasm for this region are well-known and popular. Passionately provincial, he maintains that there are still layers of learning to experience in this, his chosen habitat. Hank creates at the nexus of natural history, human history, geography and art.