My Side of the Mountain: List 1

by Jean Craighead George
Crowded by his parents and eight siblings in a New York City apartment, twelve-year-old Sam Gribley runs away to live by himself on his great-grandfather's abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains.

This list covers "I Hole Up in a Snowstorm"–"The Old, Old Tree."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4

Click here to explore our other lists in this mountainous trilogy.
15 words 2292 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. venison
    meat from a deer used as food
    I have been just too busy gathering nuts and berries, smoking venison, fish, and small game to keep up with the exact date.
  2. tether
    restraint consisting of a rope or chain
    Frightful was leashed to her tree stub. She seemed restless and pulled at her tethers.
  3. whittle
    cut small bits or pare shavings from
    I cut off a green twig and began to whittle. I have always been good at whittling. I carved a ship once that my teacher exhibited for parents’ night at school.
  4. emphatic
    forceful and definite in expression or action
    All the manuals I had read were very emphatic about where fish lived...
  5. congregate
    come together, usually for a purpose
    In streams, fish usually congregate in pools and deep calm water.
  6. eddy
    a miniature whirlpool or whirlwind
    The heads of riffles, small rapids, the tail of a pool, eddies below rocks or logs, deep undercut banks, in the shade of overhanging bushes—all are very likely places to fish.
  7. tinder
    material that burns easily and is used for starting a fire
    When the tinder glows, keep blowing and add fine dry needles one by one—and keep blowing, steadily, lightly, and evenly. Add one inch dry twigs to the needles and then give her a good big handful of small dry stuff.
  8. loll
    be lazy or idle
    After I had lolled and rolled and sat on the steps for fifteen or twenty minutes, the door whisked open, and this tall lady asked me to come on in and browse around until opening time.
  9. depression
    a sunken or lowered geological formation
    It was ruins—a few stones in a square, a slight depression for the basement, and trees growing right up through what had once been the living room.
  10. implement
    a piece of equipment or a tool used for a specific purpose
    I poked around the foundations, hoping to uncover some old iron implements that I could use.
  11. loam
    a rich soil consisting of sand, clay and organic materials
    Too many leaves had fallen and turned to loam, too many plants had grown up and died down over the old home site.
  12. botanical
    of or relating to plants
    You would know them anywhere after a few looks at them at the Botanical Gardens and in colored flower books.
  13. venture
    an undertaking with an uncertain outcome
    However, this venture turned out all right, because I did not have to noose that bird.
  14. sentinel
    a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
    Two sentinel boulders, dripping wet, decorated with flowers, ferns, moss, weeds—everything that loved water—guarded a bathtub-sized spring.
  15. citified
    having the customs or manners of someone urban
    That’s how citified I was in those days. I had never lived without a bucket before—scrub buckets, water buckets—and so when a water problem came up, I just thought I could run to the kitchen and get a bucket.
Created on Wed Jul 29 19:28:45 EDT 2015 (updated Fri Aug 01 10:39:18 EDT 2025)

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