Text Leveling System

Crinkleroot's Guide to Walking in Wild Places

RDQ:	782	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	1236		Diff Words	543
Lex	700	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	732	59.2%	Hi freq	192	35.4%
AR	3.3	Long Sentences	9.5	Low Freq occurs	106	8.6%	Low freq	82	15.1%

Hello. My name is Crinkleroot. 
When I woke up this fine summer morning my feet were itching to take me places. I'm going for a long walk. You can come too! We'll be walking in wild places. You'll need to wear long pants so brush and stickers won't scratch your legs. In the clearing around my cabin small birds nest amid the tall grasses and weeds. Look! A song sparrow nestled on her eggs. Let's tiptoe back and away so we won't disturb her. What's this? A tick is crawling on my pants! I must have brushed against a grass blade that the tick was on. When you are walking in weedy or grassy places stop every so often to check your clothes for ticks. The odds are you won't find any. But if you do happen to find a tick on you clothing get the tick off before it crawls onto you skin. Ticks bite and suck blood. You can remove a tick from you clothes by pushing it off using a twig. On longer hikes away from home I carry a tweezers for removing any ticks I might find on my skin. About ticks Ticks have eight legs and flat hard bodies. Ticks cling to plants and extend their forelegs to seize a passing host. Mice deer pets and cattle are common tick hosts. Ticks are in woods fields lawns flower beds and gardens. Ticks are most numerous in tall grass. Ticks carry and can transmit disease-causing organisms. Ticks cannot fly. Most do not jump. You must brush against a tick for it to get on you. Various ticks shown larger than life size. (Silhouettes show ticks actual sizes) dog tick wood tick deer tick lyme tick the deer tick which carries lyme disease is no bigger that a pin head. Precautions against ticks Wear a hat and long pants. Use insect repellent. put it on your neck behind your ears on your wrists and ankles. Stay to cleared trails and to mowed paths. When walking in tall grass tuck your pants cuffs into your socks. You can pick up a tick from your pet. Be sure to protect your pets with tick-repellent collars. After an outing ask someone to check your hair for ticks. You can check your body by yourself. Especially check your armpits and groin area. More about ticks and lyme disease can be found on page 32. Here's a nice clear path beside the brook. Listen to the running stream. The water sounds remind me of friendly people chatting or children laughing and having fun. There are fragrant ferns growing along the stream. These ferns smell like freshly mowed hay. They are called hayscented ferns. Wherever you walk except in desert areas you are likely to find ferns growing along the trails. Here are five common species of ferns for you to look for. Christmas fern 36" long Sensitive fern 12" long Bracken 36" tall Maidenhair spleenwort 5" long ebony spleenwort 15" long Cinnamon Fern 36" tall Following a brook every bend in the stream leads to a fresh new place. Here where the brook is shaded by trees the air is cool and damp. You tread on fallen leaves and pine needles. Thick patches of green moss carpet parts of the trail and cover tops of stream boulders. I never wade in water that looks discolored or oily. I could be polluted or littered with broken glass or rusty metal. This brook is so clear and sparkling - I can't resist stepping in! Wading in a stream you feel the cool push of moving water. It is the constant motion of the water that wears away the stream stones makes them round and smooth. In a shallow pool minnows swim around your legs and nibble at your toes. Hoo! Ha! Hee! That tickles! Walking barefoot is a way to really feel the world the way animals do. Walk flat footed like a raccoon and make perfect whole footprints in the wet sand. Or tiptoe along like a deer and leave only toe prints. When I'm walking barefoot I find all sorts of wonderful things because I look at the ground carefully before each step. Here's a blue jay feather! In my collection of found things I have a few four-leafed clovers indian arrowheads smooth and colorful stream stones and my prize find - a long shedded snakeskin. Before we leave the brook we had better put our shoes back on. Hmmmm... there's a hornet flying right around me. Maybe it thinks that my yellow shirt is a giant dandelion! If a hornet wasp or bee flies close to you don't run or swat the air. You may provoke a sting. Instead remain calm and let the insect fly away on its own. If it should happen to land on you gently brush it off and walk away. If you see a hornet wasp or bee disappear behind the leafy branches of a bush or tree or fly into an opening in a hollow log or alight on the ground and crawl down a hole ... don't go near that place! You may accidentally be invading a whole nest of stinging hornets or a hive full of angry bees. Even I am careful about that and I was born in a tree and raised by bees! Rock can be fun to climb and walk over as long as it isn't too slippery. Big boulders like this one that are out in the open are kept clean by rains and cleared by wind. They look bare and bald. But in the crevices where windblown dust and other debris collect soil is created. And in that thin layer of soil tiny plants and seedling trees grow. There's a miniature forest in this crack! At the edge of the woods plants grow in tangled thickets. You have to search for a gap in the greenery to walk through. Step back! There's a patch of poison ivy. It grows in sunny places along the borders of woods and streams on the roadsides and around old buildings. Poison ivy poison oak and poison sumac all have oil on them which if rubbed on your skin can cause an itching awful rash. Poison ivy and oak turn red in autumn. Poison ivy Poison oak has more oval oak-like leaves. Both poison ivy and poison oak have glossy leaves that grow in clusters of three. Unlike non-poisonous sumacs which have toothed leaves the leaves of poison sumac are not toothed. Poison sumac in autumn leaves of all sumac turn scarlet Speaking of poison plants if you see any wild mushrooms look but do not touch! Some are deadly poisonous just a touch may accidently get some poison on your hands and from hand to mouth.  The woodland is marked with the footpaths of animals - tiny footpaths made by mice rabbit runs and deer trails. All of the trails through the woods have been created simply by the pressing of animals' feet traveling over the same ground day after day. I've created a footpath of my own. It leads right to the door of my cabin. After a day outdoors walking in the fields and woods climbing over rock and wading in water my feet deserve a warm bath and a pair of soft slipper socks. Then I like to sit back put my feet up and wiggle my toes. How about you?]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Oral/Natural

Features

First Person

Topic

*Science

*Plants

Nature

Forests

Insects

Low Frequency Words

accidentally	actual	alight	boulders	carries
cinnamon	clovers	constant	crawling	crevices
dandelion	debris	deserve	discolored	disease
ebony	fern	ferns	footed	forelegs
fragrant	glossy	greenery	groin	hayscented
hollow	host	hosts	invading	ivy
lawns	leafed	likely	littered	lyme
maidenhair	miniature	minnows	motion	mowed
mushrooms	nestled	numerous	organisms	outing
oval	patches	poisonous	polluted	precautions
provoke	repellent	resist	roadsides	scarlet
seedling	seize	sensitive	shaded	shallow
shedded	shown	silhouettes	snakeskin	sparkling
sparrow	spleenwort	sumac	sumacs	swat
tangled	thickets	toothed	tread	tweezers
various	wasp	wears	weedy	windblown
woodland	wrists