Part 8 Summary and Analysis

In the Children in the Woods (1982), in this short essay, the author discusses how much pleasure he gets from walking with children through nature, and how he realized the best way to be with them was to guide / teach them into answering their questions themselves. He uses the example of how he led some children he was with into understanding that a small jawbone they found was that of a raccoon, and further comments on how grateful many of the children he has traveled with have been for the sense and spirit he has shown them. He also speaks of the value of teaching them reverence and respect in the face of nature. "If one speaks," he says, "it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits together, to indicate what a long, fierce...