现代大学英语精读3课文电子版.docVIP

Lesson Four ：Wisdom of Bear Wood Michael Welzenbach 1. When I was 12 years old, my family moved to England, the fourth major move in my short life. My father’s government job demanded that he go overseas every few years, so I was used to wrenching myself away from friends. 2. We rented an 18th-century farmhouse in Berkshire. Nearby were ancient castles and churches. Loving nature, however, I was most delighted by the endless patchwork of farms and woodland that surrounded our house. In the deep woods that verged against our back fence, a network of paths led almost everywhere, and pheasants rocketed off into the dense laurels ahead as you walked. 3. I spent most of my time roaming the woods and fields alone, playing Robin Hood, daydreaming, collecting bugs and bird-watching. It was heaven for a boy — but a lonely heaven. Keeping to myself was my way of not forming attachments that I would only have to abandon the next time we moved. But one day I became attached through no design of my own. 4. We had been in England about six months when old farmer Crawford gave me permission to roam about his immense property. I started hiking there every weekend, up a long, sloping hill to an almost impenetrable stand of trees called Bear Wood. It was my secret fortress, almost a holy place, I thought. Slipping through a barbed-wire fence, I’d leave the bright sun and the twitter and rustle of insects and animals outside and creep into another world — a vaulted cathedral, with tree trunks for pillars and years’ accumulation of long brown needles for a softly carpeted floor. My own breathing rang in my ears, and the slightest stirring of any woodland creature echoed through this private paradise. 5. One spring afternoon I wandered near where I thought I’d glimpsed a pond the week before. I proceeded quietly, careful not to alarm a bird that might loudly warn other creatures to hide. 6. Perhaps this is why the frail old lady I nearly ran into was as startled as I was. She caught