Part 4 Summary and Analysis

In Trying the Land (1979), the author describes how, in the company of his friend Richard, he travels a familiar and yet always changing path through a forest. As he describes his examinations of leaves, trees, and beaver dams, he experiences memories of similar travelers he's both known and only read about, inventors and setters of traps, and centuries-ago chroniclers of flora (plant life) and fauna (animal life). Meanwhile, he also interjects comments on how he and Richard are both well-read and, in some ways, intellectual, juxtaposing these comments with further references to other explorers and their searches for elusive, secretive wildlife.

In Landscape and Narrative (1984), the author narrates the circumstances of his being told stories about wolverines by a group of northern hunters, both circumstances and story triggering, in him, contemplations of what a story is and how it functions. He...