The Story of The Territory of Ultima Thule, Chapter 1: Scrabble and Poetry

 

By: Misty Murph'Ariens

 

The land we live on, our property, is called The Territory of Ultima Thule. Why? You may well ask. Like anything with me, it is a long story. And it starts with a game of Scrabble. You see, when you live deep in the woods and have no TV or reliable lights, the winter evenings tend to get pretty long. To stave off boredom, Bryce and I would play board games and, both being nerds, we love Scrabble above all. We play with my family's traditional rules whereby, in order to make the games more interesting while improving ones vocabulary, we have open access to the dictionary (my favourite book). There is immense incentive to get huge points by discovering a word that uses up a z, q, y and w all in one neat play. Or a word that perfectly fills out an existing ordinary four-letter word to spell a perfectly cromulent eleven-letter word (using up all your tiles in one play and netting you an extra 50 points on top of your already stellar 26 point word). In one such play, one frosty night, Bryce spelled out the word 'Thule' on our Scrabble board and history was made. It is tradition with open dictionary Scrabble that if you play a word whose meaning is not known, you must read aloud the definition, as supplied by Mac Millan dictionary. (We never try to bluff a fake word, preferring to always keep the games friendly). So, he read, “Thule: ultima Thule def. 1”. Curious. Okay... now we need ultima Thule: 1) the land considered by ancient geographers to be the northernmost part of the habitable world. It was situated somewhere in the sea beyond northwestern Europe. 2) any faraway, mysterious region. 3) utmost limit, point or degree attainable, as of an ideal. For reasons already mentioned, we were in the habit of keeping a list of all the words that we had discovered so that we would remember to integrate them into our everyday lexicon. We also got into the habit of writing intentionally bad poetry, the reasons for which are an even longer and stranger story, (see Vogon poetry, Douglas Adams). From our list of words came the poem 'Gthalge'. This little ditty used all of our `I didn’t know that was a word` words, plus the addition of 'Gthalge' which had its origins as a spontaneous outburst from Bryce denoting surprise and mild outrage at not being able to play his most excellent 7-letter word (gthalge)...but I digress. So, since you must now be chomping at the bit to hear it, here it is; Gthalge, he said, his wife abed. His quern he churned to grind his bread. His daily dose: two slices toast, a copy of the evening post. He realized procrastination could not undo concatenation. The paucity of encomiums, his life had come bereft of `em. Iwis, his os, did ay complain, the spondee of his turpid brain. Profligately, his living duel shall arrive at Ultima Thule. -by Bryce Murph`Ariens You can clearly see why, when we bought our property several years later, Utlima Thule was a natural choice for a name. That much is obvious. But, why the `Territory of`...`? An astute question, dear reader. But that is another long (and strange) story for another day.