Part 5
One day Sam comes upon something he has not seen in months: another human being. A man is asleep near his camp — a wandering college English teacher who has lost his way. Sam is wary at first, guarding the secret of his hidden life, but the stranger turns out to be gentle, curious, and delighted by Sam’s wilderness skills. Sam nicknames him ‘Bando,’ and the two become fast friends. Bando stays for a spell, and together they do the happy work of the woods: they fish, gather food, make music on willow whistles, and talk long into the nights. Bando brings something Sam did not know he was missing — conversation, ideas, news of the wider world, the simple pleasure of another mind. He even gives Sam’s way of life a kind of dignity, treating the boy not as a runaway but as a genuine woodsman and friend. When Bando finally must leave, he promises to come back, and he keeps his word, returning at Christmas and again in the spring. For Sam, Bando becomes almost a second father and a bridge to the human world he left behind. And Sam, who set out to prove he could live entirely alone, discovers how deeply he treasures a friend — and how a life of pure solitude, however grand, has a hollow place in it that only other people can fill.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Friendship words: solitude, stranger, companionship, wary, treasure… |
| Literary Elements | The visitor, a friendship formed, and solitude questioned |
| Cross-Curricular | Solitude — the value, and the limits, of being alone in nature |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Chapters 13–14 | Meeting Bando — Sam finds a lost English teacher asleep near camp; wary at first, he befriends the man he nicknames Bando, and they share the happy work of the woods. |
| Chapter 15 | A Second Father — Bando brings conversation, news, and dignity to Sam’s life; when he leaves he promises to return, and does — at Christmas and in spring. |
Rope is one of the oldest manufactured goods, and it can be made from plants growing almost anywhere. The technique is reverse wrap: split a bundle of fibres in two, twist each strand in one direction, and wind the two around each other in the other direction so that the twist locks itself. Nettle, dogbane and the inner bark of basswood all yield long fibres once the outer material is stripped and the stems have been left to rot slightly, a controlled decay called retting. Fibres are added by overlapping their ends, so a cord can be extended indefinitely. Cordage matters more than it sounds. Without it there are no snares, no bindings for a shelter, no fishing line and no way to attach a stone to a handle, which is why archaeologists treat evidence of rope as a marker of real technical skill.
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
Trackers read a forest through the marks animals leave. Deer are the easiest teachers: their split hoof leaves a heart-shaped print pointing in the direction of travel, and their habit of using the same routes creates faint runs that are visible once you know to look low. In autumn, bucks scrape bark with their antlers, leaving rubs on saplings at a consistent height. Trackers also read scat, the droppings that identify a species and reveal its recent diet, and they note browse lines where every branch has been eaten to the same height. The skill is less about the individual sign than about the pattern. A trail, a water source, a feeding area and a bedding area form a daily circuit, and someone who maps that circuit can predict where an animal will be at dawn instead of hoping to meet one by luck.
- He nicknames him Bando.
- They fish, make music, and talk together.
- Wary at first, Sam befriends the man.
- Sam finds a stranger asleep near his camp.
- Bando leaves but promises to return — and does.
Dialogue in a book with almost no people in it does disproportionate work. Novelists exploit the contrast: after many pages of a single interior voice, the first sustained conversation changes the texture of the prose entirely, and readers feel the shift as relief or intrusion depending on how it is staged. Writers also use a visitor to solve an information problem, since a stranger asks the questions a reader has been asking, allowing explanation without the narrator lecturing. Craft manuals warn against the crude version, sometimes called an expository exchange, in which characters tell each other things they both already know. The better technique keeps each speaker pursuing their own purpose, so information surfaces as a by-product of a real conversation. Watch what a solitary character reveals to a stranger that they never wrote down when alone, because that gap is genuine characterization.
Researchers study trust with simple games. In the trust game one player may send money to a stranger, the amount is multiplied, and the stranger decides how much to return; classic experiments find most people send a substantial share and most recipients return enough to make it worthwhile. Repeated interaction strengthens this sharply, because both sides now face a future. Political scientist Robert Axelrod ran tournaments of strategies for repeated cooperation and found the winner was a simple rule called tit for tat — cooperate first, then copy whatever the other player did last. Its virtues were being nice, being provokable, and forgiving quickly. The finding maps onto ordinary life. A first meeting between strangers usually opens with a small, cheap act of generosity, and what happens next depends far less on character than on whether either expects to meet again.
Think back over these chapters. A boy who has not spoken to another human in months rounds a bend and finds a man asleep in his woods — and his first instinct is to hide, to protect the secret life he has built. But the stranger wakes gentle and curious, charmed rather than alarmed by a boy who lives in a tree, and something in Sam that had gone quiet comes roaring back to life: the pleasure of talk, of ideas, of another mind beside his own. They fish and whittle whistles and stay up late, and when the man must go he promises to return — and does, at Christmas, in spring. And the boy who set out to prove he needed no one discovers, with a warmth that surprises him, how much he had been missing a friend.
Sam’s joy at meeting Bando quietly raises one of the book’s biggest questions: how much time alone does a person really want? Sam’s adventure belongs to a long tradition of people who go alone into nature to find themselves. The most famous is Henry David Thoreau, who in the 1840s left ordinary society to live by himself in a small cabin at Walden Pond, and then wrote a beloved book about the peace, clarity, and self-reliance he discovered there. Thoreau was not wrong. Real solitude in nature can calm a restless mind, sharpen the senses, build independence, and teach a person who they truly are when no one is watching — every one of these gifts Sam receives on his mountain.
But solitude has a limit, and Bando’s arrival reveals it: human beings are deeply social creatures. Long stretches of isolation, even in a beautiful place, tend to bring loneliness, and most people who seek time alone end up craving connection again. Even Thoreau regularly walked into town and welcomed visitors; he was alone, but never entirely cut off. Jean Craighead George is honest about both halves of this truth: she fills Sam’s solitary year with wonder and hard-won peace — and then, through Sam’s joy at Bando’s company, she shows that a person is not meant to be completely alone. The lesson is not that solitude is bad; it is that solitude is one ingredient of a good life, not the whole recipe. Time alone can heal and teach us; other people give us something no amount of solitude ever can.
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 5 “Alone and Together”
Sam loves his solitude but lights up at a friend’s company — both are true. Write about how you feel about time alone versus time with others. When do you crave solitude, and when do you most need people? 6–10 sentences. End with the balance that feels right for you.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 5 Complete!
You finished Chapters 13–15 of My Side of the Mountain.
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Your writing was checked automatically for length, spelling, grammar, and whether you included the key parts of the scene. Scroll back to Part 5 anytime to read your feedback and improve your work.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Jean Craighead George. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Jean Craighead George’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.