questions from "Voyageurs by Scott Russell Sanders" and "Back Home by Emma Stewart"

here is the artical for "Voyageurs by Scott Russell Sanders"-----------------

1. In morning mist on a northern river, a slab of stone tumbled from a boulder into the water, where it came to life and floated, turning into a sleek black head that swam in circles dragging a V of ripples behind it. A beaver, I thought, as I watched from shore. But no sooner had I named it than the creature bobbed up and then dove, exposing a long neck and humped back and pointed tail. Not a beaver, I realized, but an otter. I was pleased to find a label for this animate scrap, as though by pinning the right word on the shape-shifter I could hold it still.

2. Presently a second otter, then a third and fourth broke free of the boulder and slithered down into the mercury sheen of the river. They dove without a splash, their tails flipping up to gleam like wands in the early sunlight, and they surfaced so buoyantly that their forepaws and narrow shoulders lifted well out of the water. Then one after another they clambered back onto the rock and dove again, over and over, like tireless children taking turns on a playground slide.

3. My daughter Eva came to stand beside me, the hood of her parka drawn up against the cool of this July morning here in the north woods, on the boundary between Minnesota and Ontario. We passed her binoculars back and forth, marveling at these sleek, exuberant animals.

4. “Wouldn’t you love to swim with them?” she whispered.

5. “I’d love to sit on that boulder and let them do the swimming,” I answered.

6. “If only they’d let us!”

7. Always quick to notice the flicker of life, Eva had spent the past two summers studying birds with a research team, and now, halfway through college, she had become a disciplined as well as a passionate observer. Science had complicated her vision without lessening her delight in other creatures.

8. “What do you suppose they’re doing?” I asked.

9. “The technical term for it,” she said, “is goofing around.”

10. “I suppose you’ve got some data to back that up.”

11. “I’ll show you the graphs when we get home.”

12. Drawn by our whispers and watchfulness, the others from our camp soon joined us on the granite bluff, some bearing mugs of coffee, some with plates of steaming blueberry pancakes. We had been canoeing in the Boundary Waters Wilderness for several days, long enough for the men’s faces to stubble with beards, for the women’s faces to burnish from wind and sun. When all ten of us were gathered there beside the river, intently watching, suddenly the otters quit diving, swiveled their snouts in our direction, then ducked into hiding beneath some lily pads. After a couple of minutes, as though having mulled over what to do about this intrusion, they sallied out again and resumed their romping, chasing one another, bobbing and plunging, but farther and farther away, until they disappeared around the next bend.

13. If our scent or voices had not spooked them, then our upright silhouettes, breaking the glacier-smoothed outline of the shore, must have signaled danger to the otters. There was no way of knowing what else, if anything, we meant to them. What did the otters mean to us? What held us there while our pancakes cooled, while acres of mist rode the current past our feet, while the sun rose above a jagged fringe of trees and poured creamy light onto the river? What did we want from these elegant swimmers?

ory, the Ojibwa, or the old French voyageurs might have wanted; not their souls or meat. I did not even want their photograph, although I found them surpassingly beautiful. I wanted their company. I desired their instruction—as if, by watching them, I might learn to belong somewhere as they so thoroughly belonged here. I yearned to slip out of my skin and into theirs, to feel the world for a spell through their senses, to think otter thoughts, and then to slide back into myself, a bit wiser for the journey.

15. In tales of shamans the world over, men and women make just such leaps, into hawks or snakes or bears, and then back into human shape, their vision enlarged, their sympathy deepened. I am a poor sort of shaman. My shape never changes, except, year by year, to wrinkle and sag. I did not become an otter, even for an instant. But the yearning to leap across the distance, the reaching out in imagination to a fellow creature, seems to me a worthy impulse, perhaps the most encouraging and distinctive one we have. It is the same impulse that moves us to reach out to one another across differences of race or gender, age or class. What I desired from the otters was also what I most wanted from my daughter and from the friends with whom we were canoeing, and it is what I have always desired from neighbors and strangers. I wanted their blessing. I wanted to dwell alongside them with understanding and grace. I wanted them to go about their lives in my presence as though I were kin to them, no matter how much I might differ from them outwardly

------------and here is the artical for "Back Home by Emma Stewart"-------------

1. As a child, I lived some distance back in the woods. The road wandered aimlessly like a writhing snake among huckleberry bushes and briers, along a sloping hillside where mountain laurel and honeysuckle blooms scented the air in late spring. It passed beside a field, which was enclosed with a barbed wire fence. Black Betty, our cow, was pastured there. Growing profusely beside the fence were large lavender violets.

2. When the road got tired of winding, and I got tired of walking, we were always at the same place. The huge boxwood bushes stood tall and graceful, as though they were soldiers, guarding a humble little shack, the closest place to heaven—my home.

3. There was a two-story frame dwelling, politely asking for a fresh coat of whitewash. It had a tin roof, painted as red as a strawberry, that rattled when the wind blew. A wisteria vine was tightly clinging to the front-porch columns, and a rusty screen door shrieked loudly when it was opened.

4. The floor was bare except for a few scatter rugs my grandma had crocheted with a button hook. The ceilings were high, and draped with a few cobwebs. The mantle was decorated by a seven-day alarm clock that had been on vacation for years. A kerosene lamp, its globe black from smoke, stood atop a dresser in the corner.

5. To the chimney was attached an old cast-iron heater, cracked down the side, which gave us comfortable warmth in cold weather. There was also a box of neatly sawed oak wood.

6. During the summer we waved a palm leaf fan to stir up a little breeze. However, the second floor was air-conditioned rather well by a “balm-ogilead” tree that swayed with the wind and circulated a gentle breeze through our upstairs windows.

7. We ate in a little kitchen which stood out in the backyard away from the main house. The kitchen was like an icebox in the winter and a furnace in summer.

8. We had an ugly, old black cookstove, a huge square table covered usually with a bright floral-patterned oilcloth, and some round-back wooden chairs. A bucket of water from the moss-covered well in the backyard was placed on a little table by the stove, and a coconut shell dipper hung beside the bucket. Electricity hadn’t found its way to our part of the country yet.

9. But our food was good. Nothing can quite compare to the homemade biscuits, fried ham sizzling in red gravy, cabbage floating in ham grease, or butter cake with homemade chocolate icing. My mother would stand on the kitchen porch and call out when the meals were ready.

10. I spent a lot of time on the barrel-stave hammock in the backyard under the old gnarled trees. I would swing for hours in the fresh air and sunshine and become lost in pleasant reverie. That was my idea of recreation. I didn’t know what it was to be lonely.

11. Mama was a delightful person. She was tall, stately and slender, with warm brown eyes. Her long black hair was tucked in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was always busy cooking, churning, feeding chickens, washing clothes on an old scrub board, or drawing water with a windlass and rope from a fifty-foot well. But she found time to rock and cuddle me, and sew for my dollies.

12. Daddy walked behind a mule and a horse and a double plow all day, turning up fresh ground and putting out of sight old dead grass and broom straw. There were fresh earthy smells everywhere. In the distance a crow would “caw,” and Daddy would mock him and try to frighten him away.

13. After supper sometimes we’d walk out to a neighbor’s house, or else we’d just sit and talk or play the hand-cranked Victrola. Life was simple for us, but it was good. 14. Since those days the world has changed a great deal—and so have I. With all our progress though, love is still the greatest force on earth. I saw it in my parents long ago. It was love that made a humble country home seem like heaven.

---------------questions----

---- question 1----

Read the quotations from the two selections

What I desired from the otters was also what I most wanted from my daughter and from the friends with whom we were canoeing, and it is what I have always desired from neighbors and strangers. I wanted their blessing. I wanted to dwell alongside them with understanding and grace.

Since those days the world has changed a great deal--and so have I. With all our progress though, love is still the greatest force on earth. I saw it in my parents long ago. It was love that made a humble country home seem like heaven.

In both quotations, the authors display---

A-A desire for change

B-Appreciation for human connections

C-Indifference

D-Self-sacrifice

-------------question 2----------

What do the narrators of both selections have in common?

A-They both value a sense of belonging

B-They both have a loving relationship with their parents

C-They both value the oneness of nature

D-They both struggle with being accepted

-------------question 3----------

In both selections, nature is described as something--

A-The narrators interact with rarely

B-That represents comfort and tranquility

C-The narrators find completely grotesque

D-That is fickle and indifferent