Round 2: Assignment 3

Thank you to Lis and CarolynM (I don't have a link for her) for your feedback on my first draft of my writing assignment.

You were both right and I felt a little inadequate at first....but, today, I trudged back into the assignment.  Taking your words to mind, I changed the tense to the current tense and I removed a few dull words, added more color and reviewed my sensory list.  Oh, also I tried to gear it a little more to the appropriate age group... middle school to high school age -- I hope I hit it.

I am sure there are missing commas (though, more likely with me 'too  many' commas -- I tend to over punctuate.  Time to pull that rule book back out) and possibly a run on sentence or two. It is hard to get all that detail in without sounding like a thesaurus or dictionary.

Anyhow, DRAFT 2:  FALL WALKS IN THE WOODS

I love to walk along the old trails in my Grandpa’s woods.  The woods are always peaceful as Fall settles in.  The passageway into the woods is lined with huge, tall oak trees and towering tall pines, the woods itself checkered in evergreens.  The dense timbers hush the woods and it’s inhabitants into an eerie quiet.  The shrubs now almost completely naked and stripped of their foliage sit still. Though, from time to time the silence breaks momentarily at the barking chatter of a grey squirrel.

From somewhere above an acorn cracks loose as I wandered my way along the path, shuffling my feet in the copper colored blanket of leaves beneath them.  I hear the acorn falling, hitting a limb here and there, as it slices through the air on its way down from the peak of a tall, slender oak.

Finally, the acorn lands with a light thud somewhere along the path up ahead of me.  The descent surely snuggled the acorn deep in the damp, golden leaves that have now carpeted the forest floor. It is an almost endless fall from the tops of the oak trees.  Their grey trunks seem to rise forever up, up, up glittered in gold and red leaves, and dotted by a few that still remain green.  An occasional breeze sways the treetops as if they are shaking hands with the sky.

Everything is changing colors from green to red, to orange, to brown. Fall handing the season over to Winter almost before my eyes. The timberland entices the senses, heightening sight, sound, and smell.  Occasionally, a crisp, cool breeze tickles my nose with the scent of damp dirt and a hint of winter on the way.  I lick my dry lips and can taste the soil fragrant air on my tongue.

A crisp waft chaps at my cheeks causing me to shiver and my toes are beginning to complain about the cold.  Another breeze blows and the forest comes alive as more leaves brake free from their homes in the trees.  The burnt-sienna leaves twirl around riding the air as they rock back and forth on their way down. Finally, taking rest on the earthy path and deepening the leaf-blanketed ground.

A flicker catches my attention. A doe saunters her way through the trunks of the trees.  I freeze almost holding my breath so as not to alert her.  She nibbles at the acorns on the ground.  I can hear her mandible crushing them as she chews.  She flickered her ears listening intently for any sign of danger as she noiselessly pads along her way, meandering as if she has no real destination. 

Her smooth, brown fur shimmers as she passes through a ray of sunlight gleaming in a thin trickle from somewhere atop the trees. She mouths at a slender shrub, picking from it the last of the purple berries it holds.  Elegantly and quietly the doe steps her way through the timberland.  And, then, just as mystically as she had appeared she fades into the darkness of a thicket.

I emerge as if from another world, into the pasture behind the old wooden house.  It holds the apparitions of generations.  Three red hornets, buzz in and out of the open windows.  Soon they’ll be buried in the hive underground to sleep out the winter.

I feel relaxed and clear of mind.  I love walking in the woods at Fall.

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I'm not completely satisfied with my intro as it seems to delay the visual of the story.  So, I might change that up and add more at the end ( if possible after cutting back to my assigned word count).  I wanted to add something upon returning home to demonstrate the air, heavy with the smell of damp ashes from the fireplace and also the smell of bacon and breakfast calling me home.

But, that might have to sit in my thoughts.  Anyhow, draft 2 -- Thoughts again?

Round 2: Assignment 3