Whole lotta nestling going on in the Ozarks

Did they all go to school together? I’m talking about those writers who love the word “nestled.”

Branson and its attractions are frequently nestled. Here’s a sampling:

From a resort:

Nestled in the breathtaking Ozarks, Welk Resorts Branson is a first class destination hotel resort offering luxurious hotel accommodations, lodge accomodations, dining, and live theatre entertainment.

From a press release promoting Branson’s new airport:

Branson, nestled in the exquisite natural beauty of the Ozark Mountain region of southwest Missouri, is decidedly one of America’s top vacation destinations.

From a church (hey, churches like tourist dollars too):

Branson, Missouri, nestled in the Ozark Mountains, is ranked 20th among all overnight leisure vacation destinations in the country.

Google found 51,500 instances in which Branson and things in it were nestled. Is that a record? Google finds only 27, 300 instances in which Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and its many attractions were nestled.

What about the Rocky Mountain villages? Do they nestle as much? Aspen gets about three times Branson’s tally. Alberta’s Lake Louise is about equal to Branson. Crested Butte and Taos are in a virtual tie with Eureka Springs.

In the world arena, Lake Como in Italy gets three million hits with Google. Davos, in the Swiss Alps, nestles almost as much, but this Google result may be corrupted by associations with the Swiss food giant  “Nestle,” which has been the object of protests at  Davos economic conferences, especially about how its marketing of its infant formula undermines breast-feeding.

If you want a more pure type of nestling, you may want to stick to the Ozarks, free of associations with what Donald Rumsfeld called “old Europe.”

Writers who wish to freshen up their advertising copy to promote tourism could perhaps consult a thesaurus, such as a version of Roget’s, which defines nestle to mean “curl up,” but offers this list of synonyms that don’t quite mean the same thing:

bundle, burrow, cuddle, huddle, lie against, lie close, make snug, move close, nuzzle, settle down, snug, snuggle, take shelter

Let’s try out a few:

Bundled in the breathtaking Ozarks, Welk Resorts Branson….

Branson, snuggled in the Ozark Mountains….

Obviously, “nestled” works for tourism writers who don’t wish to evoke images of towns wrapped in blankets, burrowed into or huddled against the hills.

Maybe nestled sounds quaint and homey because it evokes Nestle’s chocolate products.

Nestle Corporation, still based in Switzerland, is one of the world’s largest food companies, owning such “American” labels as Purina and Gerber’s. Maybe Nestle could win a propaganda point by changing the name of its infant formula from Nestum to Nuzzle.

Branson is so deeply associated with being nestled in the Ozarks, in a few years the language–at least for advertising writers in the Ozarks– may change. We may see things like, “Eureka Springs, bransoned in the pristine beauty of the Ozark Mountains, known as the Little Switzerland of the Ozarks, offers thousands of decorative candles in dozens of quaint shoppes.”

And NesQuik could be renamed BransonQuik.