Wistman's Wood
A tiny grove of dwarf oaks on Dartmoor, growing straight out of granite boulders and covered entirely in moss and lichen. The trees are wind-twisted past recognition and there are gaps between the stones deep enough to swallow a person. The name is traced to the dialect word wisht — eerie, enchanted. It is thought to be one of the last remnants of the forest that covered Dartmoor before the Bronze Age.
Ha Long Bay
Fifteen hundred limestone islands in the Gulf of Tonkin. The name means descending dragon: gods sent dragons to defend the Vietnamese against invaders, tradition holds, and they spat out pearls and jade that became the islands. A separate strand is sailors' accounts of a sea creature that French colonial officers reported in the bay in the 1890s.
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