Observing Nature PDF

## Extended Read 2 **The Secret Spring** *From The Yearling* by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings **As you read, annotate details that help you create mental images of Jody Baxter and the secret spring.** **Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings** Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) was born in Washington, D.C. It w...

## Extended Read 2 **The Secret Spring** *From The Yearling* by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings **As you read, annotate details that help you create mental images of Jody Baxter and the secret spring.** **Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings** Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) was born in Washington, D.C. It was her dream to write fiction, but it wasn't until she moved to an orange farm in north-central Florida that her writing career really took off. *The Yearling* won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939 and has since become a classic as well as a popular movie. Rawlings worked hard at her craft. "Writing is agony for me," she once said. "I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three." ## Birch Bark Canoes By Amanda Polidore Birch trees have always grown in the forests of the Northeast. When Native Americans lived in the area long ago, they recognized and valued this gift from nature. They figured out that the outer bark of white birches could be used to make useful things, such as wigwam coverings and food containers. However, the most important item they created was the birch bark canoe. The birch bark canoe was lightweight but sturdy. It could carry heavy loads for long distances. The Native Americans made the canoe in different sizes depending on its use. A small hunting canoe was eight to ten feet long. It could carry two people. A large canoe used for transporting goods was twenty-four feet long. It could carry up to ten people. Building a birch bark canoe took several weeks. First, the birch bark was peeled from the tree and laid on the ground. Then it was covered with heavy stones to make it flat. Next, it was placed on a frame made of poles and stakes. This formed the shape of the canoe. The ends of the birch bark were then pulled together and tied with root fibers. To make the canoe waterproof, the seams were glued with pine gum and charcoal. When European explorers sailed to the northeastern coast of America in the 1500s, they were amazed by these graceful canoes that moved swiftly in water. In fact, these traditional canoes were so well designed that they became the models for today's canoes made of aluminum and fiberglass. ## Observing Nature 7. He was warm from his jaunt. The dusky glen laid cool hands on him. He rolled up the hems of his blue denim breeches and stepped with bare dirty feet into the shallow spring. His toes sank into the sand. It oozed softly between them and over his bony ankles. The water was so cold that for a moment it burned his skin. Then it made a rippling sound, flowing past his pipe-stem legs, and was entirely delicious. He walked up and down, digging his big toe experimentally under smooth rocks he encountered. A school of minnows flashed ahead of him down the growing branch. He chased them through the shallows. They were suddenly out of sight as though they had never existed. He crouched under a bared and overhanging live-oak root where a pool was deep, thinking they might reappear, but only a spring frog wriggled from under the mud, stared at him, and dove under the tree root in a spasmodic terror. He laughed. ## Realistic Fiction 6. A spring as clear as well water bubbled up from nowhere in the sand. It was as though the banks cupped green leafy hands to hold it. There was a whirlpool where the water rose from the earth. Grains of sand boiled in it. Beyond the bank, the parent spring bubbled up at a higher level, cut itself a channel through white limestone, and began to run rapidly down-hill to make a creek. The creek joined Lake George, Lake George was a part of the St. John's River, the great river flowed northward and into the sea. It excited Jody to watch the beginning of the ocean. There were other beginnings, true, but this one was his own. He liked to think that no one came here but himself and the wild animals and the thirsty birds. ## Observing Nature 3. The down grade tempted him to a lope. He reached the thick-bedded sand of the Silver Glen road. The tar-flower was in bloom, and fetter-bush and sparkleberry. He slowed to a walk, so that he might pass the changing vegetation tree by tree, bush by bush, each one unique and familiar. He reached the magnolia tree where he had carved the wildcat's face. The growth was a sign that there was water nearby. It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places. "Reckon it's because they can't move none," he decided. They took what food was in the soil under them. 5. The east bank of the road shelved suddenly. It dropped below him twenty feet to a spring. The bank was dense with magnolia and loblolly bay, sweet gum and gray-barked ash. He went down to the spring in the cool darkness of their shadows. A sharp pleasure came over him. This was a secret and a lovely place. ## Realistic Fiction In this classic novel set in the 1870s, young Jody Baxter lives with his parents in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods. In this passage, Jody goes into the woods to visit a secret spring that only he knows about. 1. He made a circle around the sheds and corn-crib and cut south through the black-jack. He wished he had a dog like Grandma Hutto's. It was white and curly-haired and did tricks. When Grandma Hutto laughed and shook and could not stop, the dog jumped into her lap and licked her face, wagging its plumed tail as though it laughed with her. He would like anything that was his own, that licked his face and followed him as old Julia followed his father. He cut into the sand road and began to run east. It was two miles to the Glen, but it seemed to Jody that he could run forever. There was no ache in his legs, as when he hoed the corn. He slowed down to make the road last longer. He had passed the big pines and left them behind. Where he walked now, the scrub had closed in, walling in the road with dense sand pines, each one so thin it seemed to the boy it might make kindling by itself. The road went up an incline. At the top he stopped. The April sky was framed by the tawny sand and the pines. It was as blue as his homespun shirt, dyed with Grandma Hutto's indigo. Small clouds were stationary, like bolls of cotton. As he watched, the sunlight left the sky a moment and the clouds were gray. "There'll come a little old drizzly rain before night-fall," he thought.