On the Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Author:Jean Craighead George [George, Jean Craighead]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, Childrens, Adventure
ISBN: 9780141312415
Google: nIfznQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0141312416
Goodreads: 77100
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 1990-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

IN WHICH

Bando Finds Some Old Adirondack Furniture

At dawn we return our campsite pretty much to its original pristine appearance and walk on down the brook.

Shortly we are out of the forest and standing in a field. A large farm lies in the valley below.

“We’ve lost Alice’s trail somewhere,” I say. “If I were her, I would not go down through a farm with a pig on a leash.”

“I would,” Bando says. “There’s a corncrib down there. Pigs like corn, you know.”

We look at each other as the same thought strikes us. Alice has already been to the farm. About a hundred yards back we had noticed several corncobs along the shore of Fitches Brook. Still unaccustomed to thinking like a pig, we had agreed that raccoons had been at work on some farmer’s crop.

Back we go, avalanching rocks as we scramble up the shaley streambed and arrive at the embankment where we had seen an ear of corn. It’s gone. I am searching upstream for it and any others when Bando calls. He is pointing to the stream bank. Four corncobs have been laid there in the shape of an arrow. Alice has been here. They point to a big flat rock where a squirrel is now stuffing kernels from another ear of corn in his cheeks. You can’t leave anything sitting around in the woods or someone will get it. Even hard deer antlers are eaten by white-footed deer mice.

I leap across the stream on the rocks, the squirrel runs, and I pick up his ear of corn. There are broad teeth marks on it which are not squirrel. Could be deer, but it’s not. It’s pig. Pig droppings nearby clinch the identification, and then, looking around, I see Crystal’s tracks in the soft loam. I’m off.

“Not so fast,” Bando calls. “Come back. I’ve found something else.”

On bare earth in the sun is another compass. This one is different from the first. Alice has propped up a stick at a 45-degree angle to the ground. On it hangs a stone on a string. Under it is a north-south directional stick. Smiling, I recall how Alice and I made a compass like this last spring. We placed a marker on the shadow that the hanging rock cast in the morning. Then, when the sun passed the meridian, we put another marker on the afternoon stone-shadow. Between the two marks and directly under the suspended rock, we laid a stick. We had a north-south line.

“She’s checking her direction,” I say.

“Well, she’s got north, all right,” Bando says, looking at his compass. “Her stick points to within 3 degrees of true north.”

“And she plotted her directional line too,” I say, pointing to the little pebbles lined up there.

“Ah, ha!” Bando lays his compass with the directional arrow lined up with the pebbles. Carefully he turns the compass housing until the arrow and north are lined up. He looks at the bearing marker. “She’s going more easterly now—80 degrees.”

We spread the county map on the ground and lay a grass blade from our stream location across the page at 80 degrees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.