Question

Read the excerpt from John Muir's "Calypso Borealis" and answer the question. [1] After earning a few dollars working on my brother-in law's farm near Portage [Wisconsin], I set off on the first of my long lonely excursions, botanising in glorious freedom around the Great Lakes and wandering through innumerable tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps, and forests of maple, basswood, ash, elm, balsam, fir, pine, spruce, hemlock, rejoicing in their bound wealth and strength and beauty, climbing the trees, revelling in their flowers and fruit like bees in beds of goldenrods, glorying in the fresh cool beauty and charm of the bog and meadow heathworts, grasses, carices, ferns, mosses, liverworts displayed in boundless profusion. [2] The rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants I discovered on this first grand excursion was Calypso borealis (the Hider of the North). I had been fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive and more difficult to force one's way through. Entering one of these great tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps one morning, holding a general though very crooked course by compass, struggling through tangled drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees, I began to fear that I would not be able to reach dry ground before dark, and therefore would have to pass the night in the swamp and began, faint and hungry, to plan a nest of branches on one of the largest trees or windfalls like a monkey's nest, or eagle's, or Indian's in the flooded forests of the Orinoco described by Humboldt. [3] But when the sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering and discouraging, I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung. The flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a snowflower … In a paragraph of 3–5 sentences, explain

Answer 1

presents endless possibilities to experience and appreciate . This is the correct option. The author, John Muir , refers to this idea when he says: "....and glorying in God's abounding inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread. ...were welcomed as friends. " The words abounding and inexhaustible refer to endless possibilties. He also uses the phrase spiritual beauty bread. This means that nature can be eaten like bread and the taste of nature can be tasted or appreciated. Plants, storms , thunderstorms and winds in the woods are in the beauty bread.

These options are not right:

-is filled with countless opportunities to discover rare plants. The writer sets the focus on nature as a whole not just on plants.

-needs to be conquered and controlled by human exploration. The writer enjoys nature ; he is not interested in controlling it.

-offers many unique challenges for the mind, body, and spirit. The writer enjoys nature ; he does not see it as challenging.