Text Leveling System

On The Far Side Of The Mountain

RDQ:	1758	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	3002		Diff Words	964
Lex	860	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	2212	73.7%	Hi freq	404	41.9%
AR	4.6	Long Sentences	12.9	Low Freq occurs	233	7.8%	Low freq	181	18.8%

In which
A storm breaks
This June morning is hot and humid with a haze so dense I can barely see the huge hemlock tree in which I live. I like the haze. It has erased all but the great tree trunks, making my mountaintop home as simple as it was when I first came here more than two years ago.
I lean back in the lounging chair I constructed from bent saplings held together with rope made from the inner bark of the basswood tree, and enjoy the primitive forest. 
A wind rises as the sun warms the earth. The haze moves off, and I see my pond, my millhouse, and the root cellar. The first year I lived here I had only a tree, a bed, and a fireplace. But one idea led to another, and the next thing I knew, I had built myself a habitat. Things just kept evolving. Take this lounging chair, for instance. One day I replaced the old stump I sat on with a three legged stool, and then I replaced the three legged stool with this comfortable chair.
The people changed, too. At first I was alone. Then]]
my family arrived and except for my lively sister, Alice departed. I don't know where Alice is this morning. She was going to go strawberry picking, but the haze is too dense for that. Maybe she's sitting on the porch of her treehouse talking to herself just as I am. A haze mutes not only the birds and beasts, but people, too. As a hot dry wind clears the air, I can see frightful, my peregrine Falcon, sitting in front of the six foot in diameter hemlock tree that I hollowed out for a home. Unlike the chairs and people, frightful has not changed. She still holds her body straight up and down and her head high in the manner of the peregrine Falcon. Her tawny breast is decorated with black marks; her back is Gray blue; her head black. When she flies, she is still a crossbow in the sky, and she still waits on above my head until I kick up a pheasant or a rabbit. Then she Stoops, speeding toward her prey at 200 miles an hour, the fastest animal on earth. She almost never misses. Hello, frightful, I say. Cree, cree, cree, car reet she answers. That is her name for me, Cree, cree, cree, car reet. All peregrine Falcons called the high pitched crees but when frightful sees me in the morning or when I return from the forest, even when she is flying above my head, she adds car reet. Hello, Sam, she is saying.
She is perched on a T block that I covered with deer hide to protect her feet. She lifts a broad foot and]]
scratches her head with a curved claw on the end of a long, narrow Toe.
Cree, cree, cree, car reet.
I call her name in her own language; I whistle three notes low high low. She responds by lifting the feathers on her body, then shaking them. This is called rousing, which is feather talk meaning I like you. I can't speak in feathers so I answer by imitating her love notes. I do this by pulling air through my two front teeth to make a soft, cozy sound.
Sometimes I have nightmares that she has left me. I awake in a sweat and try to reason with myself. Frightful will not leave me, I say. If she were going to do that, she would have departed last spring when I was flying her free. A wild tercel, the male peregrine Falcon, passed overhead. The last of the vanishing eastern peregrine Falcons breed in Greenland and Canada, and a few winter as far South as the catskills. This one was on his way to his home in the north. Frightful playfully joined him. Together they performed the peregrine courtship dance, swooping low, zooming high, then spiralling earthward. I was scared. I thought frightful was going to leave me. I whistled. She instantly pulled deeply on her wings and sped back. Within a few feet of my outstretched hand, she braked and alighted on my glove as softly as the fluff from a dandelion seed. Cree, cree, cree, car reet. She said. Hello, frightful, I answered happily.]]
Now, I whistle her name again. She turns her head and looks at me. Her curved, flesh ripping beak looks sweet and demure when you see her head on. Her overhanging brow shades large black eyes that are outlined in white feathers. She is a gorgeous creature.
At peace with me and herself, She bobs her head as she follows the flight of a  bird. I cannot see it, but I know it's a bird because frightful's feathers tell me so. She has flattened most of them to her body while lifting those between her shoulders. Bird, that means. Human is feathers flattened, eyes wide, neck pulled in, wings drooped to fly.
I get to my feet. I have daydreamed enough. While the last of the haze burns off, I weed the Meadow garden and split kindling before returning to my tree.
A hot sun now filters down through the Lacy needles of the hemlock in my Grove. I look for Alice, wondering what she's up to. That's how one thinks of Alice what is she up to? She's probably gone downmountain to the farm to see that pig she talks to.
Sticks snap in the distance. Someone is coming. Frightful has clamped her feathers to her body to say that whoever it is is not a friend. Her feathers read danger. The Phoebe clicks out his alarm cry and I tense. I have learned to heed these warning signals. The birds and animals see, hear, smell, and feel approaching danger long before I do. I pressed my ear to the ground and hear footsteps. They are heavy: possibly a black bear.]]
I smell the musky scent of warning from my friend Baron weasel. The Baron, who was living here when I arrived, considers himself the real owner of the mountaintop, but because he finds me interesting, he lets me stay.]]
Right now he doesn't like what's coming and dives into his den under the boulder. I glance at frightful again.
Her feathers are flattened to her body, her eyes wide, neck stretched, and her wings are lowered for flight. Human she is saying. I wait.
A man in a green uniform rounds the band, sees me, and hesitates as if uncertain.
Hello, I say aloud, and to myself: here it comes. He's some official. I've got to go to school this fall. Dad didn't pay the taxes on the farm. Alice is up to something again.
Do you know where Sam gribley lives? He asks.
Here, I answer period I'm Sam gribley.
Ohh, he says and glances at my face, then my Berry dyed T-shirt and finally, my moccasins. These seem to confuse him. Apparently he is not expecting a teenager.
Suddenly he looked over my shoulder and walks past me. I spin around to see him standing before frightful. My name is Leon Longbridge, he says with his back to me. I'm the conservation officer. Your harboring an endangered species a peregrine Falcon.
I am unable to speak.
Keeping an endangered species carries a fine and a year's imprisonment.
I didn't know that. He faces me.
You should have, but since you didn't, I won't arrest you. But I will have to confiscate the bird.
I can't believe what I'm hearing.]]
I'll let her go, I say. I'll turn her free. I stepped between my bird and the man. Won't everything be alright if she's free?
No, he snaps. I'm a Falconer, too. You set her loose, and as soon as I'm gone, you'll whistle and she'll come right back. He walks up to her and places his gloved hand under her breast. She steps up on it as she has been trained to do.
With A twist of his wrist he slips a hood over her head and tightens the drawstrings with his teeth and free hand. He is a Falconer I see, and a good one. My knees feel rubbery.
Frightful sits quietly. She cannot see, so she does not move, which is the reason for a hood. If a Falcon is hooded she will not bate, that is, she won't fly off your fist and hang head down by her jesses, beating her wings and hurting herself.
What will you do with her? I ask.
How old was she when you got her?
About ten days.
Then I can't let her go. She's imprinted on you. If you raise a bird from a chick, it thinks you're its mother and that it looks like you. Such a bird won't mate with its kind, because it sees people as its kind. Set free it is worthless as far as the perpetuation of the species is concerned. And perpetuation of the species is what protecting endangered animals is all about to let them breed and increase their kind.
No hunger streaks, he comments as he turns]]
frightful on his fist and looks her over. I must say, you take good care of your bird for a kid. Hunger streaks appear in tail and wing feathers if a bird does not get the right food during the time the feathers are growing in.
I am thinking what to do. Mr. Longbridge has wrapped the leash tightly around his hand and now begins to move.
I walked beside him, desperately working out a plan to save her.
I try pity. Sir, I need that bird badly. I hunt with her period she provides food for my table.
There's a supermarket in Delhi he says, hurrying along. I hurry along, too.
I try politeness. Please Sir, let her go.
You heard me. The sun now shines out of a hazeless sky, and I can see his face more clearly. He has Bony cheeks, a long nose, and heavy brows. Dark crows feet mark the corners of his eyes.
I try reason. Sir, you say you can't let her go because she won't breed. If she is useless, I might as well keep her period she's useful to me.
She'll be bred in captivity. But how, if she won't mate?
Artificial insemination. The university has a very successful artificial breeding program for endangered birds of prey. He is holding frightful out from his body; I reach out to grab her. He sees me move]]
and draws frightful against his chest. I can't reach her.
I try philosophy. But captive birds are not really birds. A bird must be part of the landscape and sky to be complete.
Her young will be returned to the wild, he replies. The juveniles are hacked to freedom.
He really is a Falconer. Heck is an old falconry term. Trainers put young unleashed birds who are just learning to fly and hunt on a hack board, a sort of artificial nest. They leave them there with food, just as the parents do at the nest. The youngsters, falconers say, are at hack free to fly and hunt. If they miss their prey, they come back to the board to eat. After a juvenile makes its first kill, the falconers leash and train it. I guess frightful's young will be put at hack, but not jessed and leashed when they learned to hunt. Instead, they would fly on and live their lives in the wild. I asked the officer if that is so.
He ignores me, so I get in front of him and walk backwards while trying to think what to do next.
Pity didn't work. Politeness didn't work. Reason and philosophy failed. I tried compassion. I love that bird. She knows me. We are bonded. She'll die without me.
She'll adjust. All she needs is the right food.
Walking backwards, I see the color of the officers eyes. One is brown and the other is blue. I am so fascinated that I lose the perfect opportunity to cut frightful free, because, in spite of the hood, she bated and]]
Hung down, exposing her jesses. But I saw too late.
The officer put his hand under frightful's breast and returned to her to his fist.
I moved closer.
About three inches of leash is exposed. I whip my hunting knife from my pocket and lunge to cut it.
A karate blow on my wrist double s me over and I stagger backward.
You're stealing my property, I shout.
It's not yours. New line she is. Once I had the idea conservation officers were gentle people not like this one.
You are harassing and talking back to an officer of the law, he shouts. I can book you for that, and for harboring an endangered species.
We have come to the edge of my Meadow, where a trail leads to the bottom of the mountain and the County Road where he must have parked his car. He trots down it. I run after him. Then I think of Alice. I'll call her period if he sees her yellow Tufts of hair, her large eyes and Bony arms and legs, and if I tell him her life depends on the Falcon's catching food, he may make an exception of me and my bird. I don't call her. I know her well. If she saw what the officer was doing, she would dive and bite him as she bit the man who was stealing eggs from my old friend Mia.]]
Fielder's chicken house. Then we'd really be in trouble, as we were that last time. I can only threaten.
I'll get a lawyer, I call out.
Mr. Longbridge stops and comes up the mountain a few paces.
You get a lawyer into this, and you'll go to jail for sure. You're violating the law. I really should arrest you, you know.
He turns and hurries down the trail I run after him a short distance and give up. The law is the law. I sink into my lounging chair and put my arms and head on my knees. I'm glad Alice isn't here. I don't have to tell her about frightful. I need time to be alone.
In which
The population shrinks
Pushing back the deerskin door of my hemlock home, I enter the smoke and minty smelling tree hollow and slump to the pile of furs that replaces my outgrown sapling bed. I put my face down to cry, but no tears come. After a long while I get up, I have to provide for Alice and myself. I should be making a box trap to catch rabbits, or a deadfall to take a deer. I don't move to do either, for I have no spirit for the jobs. It's almost as if]]
I am completely helpless without frightful. I guess I am, so I had better do something to keep myself going. Walking to my desk, I sit down at the table I built for writing. I look at my clay fireplace, which I now use only for heat and cheeriness, not cooking. I made an elaborate stone stove and oven outside where I bake, grill, and boil.
Stoves, tables, clay fireplace I keep filling my head with thoughts about these things so I won't think about frightful.
Reading always clears my mind; I'll try that.
I opened my journal, a handsome leather bound notebook miss Turner gave me last summer. She said the Birch bark scrolls I used when I first came to the wilderness were too fragile for notes, but I still have them and they are as good as ever. I thumbed through the first pages hoping to find something to distract me, like a sketch of a snare, when i notice gaps in the june entries of last year. Wondering why, I began reading the June 27 entry. Alice, my sister who is 2 years younger than I am is going to live on the mountain with me for better or worse. The way I look at it, she's here by default. Mom; dad's; my four brothers, John, Jim, Hank, and Jake; and my four sisters, Alice, Mary, Joan, and Nina climbed up my mountain 3 weeks ago and announced they were here to stay. Dad was going to plow the abandoned fields, sow seeds, and reap the grain. The boy said they would help build the house from the planks and two by fours dad brought up here for that purpose. Mom and the girls were eager to grow a garden and keep a cow. Well, the house never got built. Mrs fielder, whom I always call Mrs. strawberry because she and I gathered wild strawberries this spring I arrived on the mountain, was kind to my family. She offered them rooms in her large old farmhouse until they got started. She's alone and said they would be company for her.
Hardly had my father borrowed Mrs. strawberries horse, slats, and the plow, and taken them up one side of my Meadow and down again, than he knew why his grandfather had abandoned this land. He was not plowing soil. He was plowing rocks. Mrs. strawberry put it this way. If you want to grow stones, Mr. gribley, this is the place for you. Here in these mountains, stones are our best crop.
Next dad tried to put in a garden. After hours of digging to find soil in my Meadow, he gave up. As a last resort he called in a soil conservation officer and conferred with him.
The land's good for trees and wildlife, he told dad, and maybe a few wild plants that like poor soil and that's about all.
June seventeenth he and mother climbed the long, hard mountain trail to my home. One look at their faces told me they had not come for sumac's tea.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Headings

Prior Knowledge: Familiarity

Features

Character development

Integral Setting

Complex Problem/Solution

First Person

Present Tense

Topic

Mountains

Adaptability

Survival

*Habitats/Environments

Birds

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

abandoned	adjust	alighted	announced	apparently
approaching	artificial	bate	bated	birch
borrowed	boulder	braked	breast	captivity
carries	cellar	cheeriness	clears	compassion
concerned	conferred	confiscate	conservation	considers
constructed	courtship	crossbow	curved	dandelion
daydreamed	deadfall	deerskin	default	delhi
demure	departed	desperately	diameter	downmountain
drawstrings	earthward	eastern	elaborate	endangered
entries	evolving	exception	exposed	exposing
falcon	falcon's	falconer	falconers	falconry
falcons	fascinated	fielder	fielder's	fragile
freedom	frightful's	glance	glances	gloved
gorgeous	greenland	grove	habitat	hacked
handsome	harassing	harboring	haze	hazeless
heed	helpless	hemlock	hesitates	hollow
hollowed	hooded	hoping	humid	hunger
hurries	ignores	imitating	imprinted	imprisonment
increase	insemination	instance	instantly	jessed
jesses	journal	juvenile	juveniles	karate
kindling	lacy	land's	landscape	language
lawyer	leashed	legged	lively	longbridge
lounging	lowered	lunge	meadow	millhouse
mountaintop	musky	mutes	nightmares	nina
official	ohh	opportunity	outgrown	outlined
overhanging	paces	peace	perched	peregrine
performed	perpetuation	pheasant	philosophy	phoebe
planks	playfully	politeness	population	primitive
property	provides	purpose	reap	replies
resort	responds	rousing	rubbery	sapling
saplings	scent	scrolls	seventeenth	sketch
slump	snare	sow	spiralling	spite
stoops	sumac's	supermarket	sweat	tawny
tercel	threaten	thumbed	tufts	turner
unable	uncertain	unleashed	vanishing	violating
weasel	whistled	wildlife	wrist	younger
youngsters