School blog

Woodsong Chapter 1 Reflection

Woodsong 

Gary Paulsen

This won't be a book summary, but a chapter by chapter two paragraph thoughts page. We are reading Woodsong at Literacy class at school, and then writing on a blog. It is a private blog on kidblog.com, but I thought that you might find my thoughts on the assignments that my teacher gave us pretty interesting, so I will be posting them as well, under Woodsong. Thoughts? Well, here goes.

Summary: In the first chapter, Gary Paulsen describes how the woods lost their innocence to him. He talks about a young doe jumping over his lead dog. She is running away from a pack of wolves. She is running away over a frozen lake, but then she falls through the ice. By the time she gets out of the lake, the pack of wolves is on her. But that’s not what surprises Paulsen. Instead of just killing the doe, they start pawing at her rear end, and pulling out her insides. They start eating her from the inside out, eating her alive. That’s when Paulsen released the truth of the woods, the truth of nature. The beautiful, but painful truth.

“Many people who enjoy the woods, or seem to enjoy it are spending their time trying to kill parts of it”. Quite a paradox really. Weird, but true. Many people who hunt say, “Oh I love the woods. I love nature.” But how are they showing their love, if they are killing the animals that they are hunting. Same thing with fishing. There’s also logging. Loggers say “The woods are my life. A very important part of my life.” If that is true, than by cutting down trees, they are killing their life. They are ruing the forest, which is supposedly very important in their life. Of course, not all people go into the woods to hunt, fish or log. Some people go into the woods for a leisurely stroll, or to climb a tree, sit and read. Or to spend half the day testing trees for climbing. There’s not ruing the forest, are they? I mean, sure we could get technical and say that they are crushing they grass and ruing the bark, but no big damage. So, I guess, overall, not all people who enjoy nature are destroying it. And those who are don’t realize it. I just think that this is a good quote for all of us to think about, not just hunters and loggers. Nature is important. It can’t be important if there is none left. The woods are important. Let’s keep them that way.

Thanks a lot for reading!