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The book says, "I left New York in May."
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Sam spent his first night in the forest cold, hungry, miserable, and scared. But the next day, the sun arose and Sam found a house and a friendly old man named Bill. He said, "Sam Gribley, if you are going to run off and live in the woods, you better learn how to make a fire."
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By six o'clock he still hadn't found anyone in Delhi who had heard of the Gribleys, so he slept on the porch of the schoolhouse and ate chocolate bars for supper.
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The librarian, Miss Turner, was very helpful to Sam. She found maps, histories of the Catskills, files of letters and deeds, and finally was able to pinpoint the location of Gribley's farm for Sam.
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The house is six feet in diameter. He can "stand in it, lie down in it, and there was room left over for a stump to sit on." By December he will have a small fireplace with a chimney. He'll chip out "three other knotholes to let fresh air in."
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Even though he didn't want to, Sam helped the lady pick strawberries then walked with her back to Delhi. While there, he went to visit Miss Turner at the library and read a few books about hawks and falcons.
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Sam picked the biggest of the nestlings. "The females are bigger than the males. They are the 'falcons.' They are the pride of kings." He plans to train her to hunt food for him.
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In mid-June, Sam made a salty flavoring by boiling hickory sticks dry. It made a thick, black substance. He used it to season his wild foods to make them taste better.
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The bed is made from ash slats covered with hemlock boughs.
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Sam would like to kill a deer. He needs a door for his house, tethers for Frightful, and a blanket for warmth.
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Frightful can't fly. Her wing feathers are only about an inch long. Sam seems to love her and spends time stroking and handling her so that she will be easier to train.
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Sam was busy during the summer. He spent time working with Frightful. He tanned his deer hide and made a door. He made jesses and tethers too. He smoked the venison and used everything he could from the deer. He made a gig for catching frogs. He rigged a four-figure trap and checked it each day for a deer. One day he was lucky enough to kill one. "The rest of June was spent smoking it, and finally starting on my deerskin suit."
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The Fourth of July goes by without even a mention in Sam's book. It does say, "The summer was wonderful. There was food in abundance, and I gathered it most of the morning and stored it away in the afternoon." Perhaps July 4th is the day he burned out another tree to store more food. He probably saw some hikers and vacationers who visited the woods all summer long.
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"Sometime in July I finished my pants. They fit well, and were the best-looking pants I had ever seen. I was terribly proud of them. With pockets and good tough pants I was willing to pack home many more new foods to try."
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Sam had been using the inner bark of poplar trees to make powdered flour. ".... in August when the acorns were ready, I found that they made better flour and were much easier to handle." It was tedious work, but during the summer, Sam had time to do things like make flour.
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She had been doing well working with a lure, but Sam was happy when he wrote in his journal that she unexpectedly caught her first prey one day as they practiced with the lure. "It was only a sparrow, but we are on our way."
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Sam assumes the man he finds sleeping by his fire is an outlaw because he had heard sirens nearby. It turns out he’s an English professor out for a hike in the woods. Bando stays for a week to 10 days and they become good friends.
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Sam wants a raft for fishing in deep holes.
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Bando needs jars to store the blueberry jam he made on Sam's mountain.
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Bando used clay from the river bank to make clay pots with lids to store homemade jam in. "It was a terribly hot day for Bando to be firing clay jars, but he stuck with it. They look jam-worthy...."
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Sam and Bando play sad songs on the willow whistles. Bando will be leaving soon. The good news is, he plans to return for Christmas.
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Bando had to return to school. Sam is sad, but he soon remembers how nice it is to spend time with Frightful and the Baron Weasel.
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The seasons are changing and the animals are getting ready for winter. The weasel's coat is changing colors. Sam realizes he needs to start making winter clothes. Rabbit skin underwear! What would that feel like?!
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As winter nears, Sam knows he'll need a way to stay warm in his tree.
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Sam finally got the fire place working well enough that it didn't fill the tree with smoke. It took him three days and he and Frightful might have died if he wouldn't have realized he needed fresh oxygen in the tree.
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In a race with the squirrels, Sam gathers nuts for his winter food supply.
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Not many animals showed up the first night. It takes a while for messages to travel through the woods. But the next night, the party started "getting rough."
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All the animals came. They wrecked Sam's house and made a mess with his food. He chased them off by growling and yelling and showing them that "might is right."
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Sam hears gun shots and realizes that his clothes are a danger for getting him shot. He takes to the treetops and sees a deer that a hunter shot but did not find. He got three deer that season. The last one he got by hurrying to hide the carcass before the hunter could find it.
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Sam walked to town and met a boy he called "Mr. Jacket." He also realized he needs to stock-pile wood for the winter. He is dressed in deers skins from head to toe.
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An article in a New York newspaper tells of a boy living in Catskills mountains. Bando will read this article to Sam when he visits at Christmastime.
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Sam placed his wood piles within easy reach of the entrance to his tree. He plans to tunnel through the snow to his wood piles if (when) the snow gets deep.
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Two weeks after deer season began, Sam has three deer hides and plenty of venison. He and Frightful have the mountain to themselves again.
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"... on that third day of December when the sky blackened, the temperature dropped, and the first flakes swirled," Sam was scared.
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Sam holed up in his tree home and ate turtle soup, acorn pancakes, and other stores he had squirreled away that summer.
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The "strawberry lady" called a New York newspaper and told about meeting Sam as on his mountain. This is one of the articles that Bando reads to Sam at Christmastime.
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It's nearly Christmas and there's no sign of Bando. Sam worries that perhaps he decided not to come or that he just got too busy.
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Bando returns to the mountain to spend Christmas with Sam. He brings sugar and newspaper articles.
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Sam's dad finds Sam on the mountain. He meets Bando and Frightful and stays until the new year.
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Dad thinks Frightful is beautiful even though she doesn't let him pet her. He also admires her for being the best provider the Gribley family has ever had.
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Christmas is over and Bando needs to get back home to grade papers before he returns to school. He looked "very unhappy about the way of life he had chosen."
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Sam's dad left him alone again on the mountain. He seemed proud of Sam and his way of life. He was careful to leave in a way that would make it hard for people to trace his tracks back to Sam.
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Sam loved winter on the mountain. He was relaxed and warm. He was in excellent condition and enjoyed the winter wilderness experience. He got caught in a blizzard "one afternoon" and had to hole up under a ledge, but he enjoyed knowing he could "eat, sleep, and be warm, and outwit the storms that blasted the mountains and the subzero temperatures that numbed them." It snowed a lot, but he plowed through drifts, made paths, and even made snowshoes for easier traveling.
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He thinks it's probably a mouse, and as it turns out, he's right.
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The snow is deep on the mountain, so Sam makes snowshoes to make walking easier.
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Sam sees the mouse and feeds him nut meats. Another new friend.
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Sam sees this as a sign that "Gribley farm is a beautiful place indeed."
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Winter is taking its toll on the wildlife. Sam helps by cutting green branches for the deer herd.
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He believes they may have eggs in their nest.
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Sam climbed the maple tree to the great horned owls' nest. He saw that they do indeed have eggs. They were warm to the touch.
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Sam has to tunnel through the ice and snow to get into his tree now, but it's not really a problem.
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The book says: "At the end of February, the sap began to run in the maple trees. I tapped some trees and boiled the sap to syrup."
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Matt is a boy about Sam's age. He works for a newspaper called the Poughkeepsie New Yorker. He came to the Catskills looking for "the wild boy" thinking that if he got a good story, he might get to be a reporter. He's not fooled when Sam tries to convince him the wild boy doesn't exist. Sam agrees to let Matt spend his spring vacation with him.
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Winter is losing its grip. Jesse Coon James is tending her babies. There are plenty of fish in the streams and abundant food in the forest.
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Aaron is a man from New York who writes songs. Sam taught him his "Cold Water Song." Sam met Aaron when he was in the Catskills for the Passover festivities.
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They "spent the week fishing, hunting, trapping, gathering greens and bulbs. Matt talked less and less, slept, hiked, and pondered. He also ate well, and kept Frightful busy." Matt made himself a pair of moccasins and a hat out of deer hide. Sam never did get used to seeing Matt in the hat, but the picture in the book shows a hat I wouldn't mind wearing.
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Matt and Bando decided to make a guest house out of one of the other trees. Sam agreed to this, but he knew it meant that he would no longer be living like a runaway. He was no longer hiding in the wilderness. He was simply living in the woods very much like anyone else living in a house.
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Tom and Sam become good friends. Tom visits almost every weekend. He shares stories about his friends and happenings in town.
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As spring turned toward summer, Sam said, "It smelled good, tasted good, and was gentle to the eyes."
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Sam talks to many reporters and photographers in the early days of June. He thinks about moving to the public lands in the West.
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They had chicken for supper. "Chicken is good. It tastes like chicken."
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Sam's mother did not want to neglect her son. She insisted they live in a house. "That's how it is until you are eighteen, Sam." And that ended it.