As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods．“The woods was ou

As kids, myfriends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods．“The woods” was our part-timeaddress, destination, purpose, and excuse．If I went to a friend’s house and found him not at home, his mothermight say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone (语气) of airy acceptance．It’s similar to the tone peoplesometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golfcourse or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds,“being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for awhile.

We sometimestold ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索)．Exploring was a more popularidea back then than it is today．History seemed to be mostly about explorers．Our explorations, though,seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came upalong the way．Saywe stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries,digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.

Often we got“lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were．If you read a story in whichsomeone does that successfully, be skeptical; the topmost branches areusually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to seeanything except other trees．There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches, easy to climb andcomfortable to sit in.

It was in atree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end．By then some of us had reachedseventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence（青春期．In March, the month when weusually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to goexploring．Weclimbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the sametime that we really were rather big to be up in a tree．Soon there would be the springdances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.

1.The author and his friends were often out in the woods to _______.

  A．spend their free time                         B．play golf and other sports

  C．avoid doing their schoolwork                D．keep away from their parents

2.What can we infer from Paragraph 2?

  A．The activities in the woodswere well planned.

  B．Human history is not the resultof exploration.

  C．Exploration should be asystematic activity.

  D．The author explored in thewoods aimlessly.

3.The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaningto ______.

  A．calm           B．doubtful            C．serious               D．optimistic

4.How does the author feel about his childhood?

  A．Happy but short．                   B．Lonely but memorable.

  C．Boring and meaningless．              D．Long and unforgettable．

试题答案

【答案】

1.A

2.D

3.B

4.A