Prong, not a lick

If you hike each year through woods, or if you go fishing for trout and pay attention to your environment, or if you just like words, you probably know what a tributary is. You learn the difference between a river and a creek. And you learn that the tributaries to rivers and creeks can be small and hardly noticeable. They are the thin blue lines on maps. They have names — licks, brooks and runs mainly. In Western Maryland, for instance, Blue Lick and Big Run flow into the Savage River. 

There are also branches and forks. 

But I came across a new term the other day: Prong.

Some clever person some years ago named two small brooks that lead to a run, calling them the North Prong and South Prong. The two prongs form a fork — as do the prongs of big forks that come with carving knives — and at the fork the prongs become Lostland Run, and Lostland flows to the North Branch of the Potomac River, and the North Branch meets the South Branch and that leads to the mainstem Potomac, and on and on, to the Chesapeake Bay and the big blue world beyond. I don’t know who came up with prong for the sources of a fork, but thanks for the smile.