My Side of the Mountain was a thoughtful and wonderful book.

Sam was an amazing character who was very clever. Not only was Sam smart but he was also amazing at making friends; for example, he made friends with Bando and Matt and mastered Frightful: he is smart because he got books from the library and now knows a lot about wilderness. I thought this book was very interesting when I was reading it because Sam is a very bad camper at the start of the book but as he gets used to making shelter and catching food and all that he begins to get better and be a master camper. My favorite part of the book was every time Sam cooked a scrumptious meal, because it was like imaging a gigantic feast that was the best quality. Another thing I liked was how he adapted to nature and listened to the birds and the wind gusts: it just seemed so magical. One time Sam even needed to hide the hunter’s kill (a deer) so the hunter could not find it, which he then used to make a deerskin suit. All in all, My Side of the Mountain was very entertaining book and I suggest it to people who haven’t read it.

Now that you have read the reflection it is time for a summary about Sam and his talent for cooking at Christmastime.

Pages 116-131.

All in all, the fifteen pages that I read were very neat and heartwarming. To start, Sam and Frightful have good spirits in the winter as they were alone and warm and snug with their deerskin clothes and feathers. When Sam realizes that it is almost Christmas and Bando is coming, he needs to make a feast. The feast includes stock from the frozen venison. Sam also scooped under the snow for teaberry plants to boil down and put on snow, sort of like a snow cone, but an entrée.

He used large firm groundnuts for mashed potatoes and also decided to make onion soup. For snacks Sam organized dogtooth violet bulbs, Solomon’s seal roots, and a few dried apples.

Sam cracked walnuts, hickory nuts and beechnuts too. Now, for Christmas you can’t just eat food, you need presents, so Sam makes a present for Bando that is the following: “deer hide moccasins to be lined with rabbit fur”.

While Sam was munching on some beechnuts he heard a faint “haalllllooooo” from far down the mountain. Sam put on his coat and moccasins and launched himself down the mountain. Sam then heard another “hallo” and tried to find where the person was. He ran to where the hallo was and found Bando. “You’ve been living well,” Bando says as he pinches him and tests his meat. Bando brought some more sugar to make some jam as well. They quickly settled in and ate smoked fish and boiled dogtooth violet bulbs, and walnuts dipped in jam were dessert.

Bando pulls a newspaper out of his pocket that reads “Wild boy suspected of living off deer and nuts in the wilderness of Catskills”. Sam jumps in fright as he notices he’s been ratted out. All of the people that have come across him and his camp had ratted him out except for Bando. Although this is very scary, Bando points out that it is Christmas and nobody will come out here until May. Sam had made whistles out of willow trees and they were whistling songs like The Twelve Days till Christmas and Holy Night but sadly the whistles were too stiff and they decided to give up.

When they woke up the next day it was Christmas, and they had a delightful breakfast of acorn pancakes with jam along with sassafras tea. Bando then went on a walk and when he came back Sam gave him his presents which he liked (Sam knew this because of his “eyebrow movement”) and he wore them. Then out of nowhere they heard a voice: “I know you are there. I know you are there. Where are you?” Suddenly Sam realizes who it is and screams, “DAD!”. When Sam found his dad they ran up to each other and hugged for a solid minute and shed a few tears, but after that it was all good times. Sam’s dad praises him on the wonderful idea of building a house inside a tree. Now they start to eat, and the first course is onion soup. Sam’s dad downs the entire bowl while Bando is sipping it and Sam puts it in the snow to cool off. After that is the beautiful steak.

They carve the steak and find that the inside is pink and juicy and cooked to perfection. After that they had fluffy mashed cattail tubers, mushrooms, and more dogtooth violet bulbs, smothered in gravy that was thickened with acorn powder. Along with that they had piles of stewed honey locust beans mixed with hickory nuts. Bando then went to the stream to grab hollow reeds to make flutes and carefully made each one. In the morning Sam went ice fishing while Frightful caught a pheasant. Sam also made acorn pancakes that were covered in blueberry jam. When Bando was leaving, he agreed to bum steer the police and such so they couldn’t find him. On New Years’ Day his dad was finally leaving and said his goodbyes.