“I Put Back My Head and Howled”

We asked you for favorite passages from books, and we heard from Sarah Fuhrer, who wrote to us about the book Cider with Rosie, which is a 1959 memoir of post-World War II boyhood.

It’s by Lori Lee, and she says it’s part of the literature class curriculum in England.

And the first page opens with Lee’s description of his earliest memory at the age of three and the confusion and bewilderment from the day his family moved house to a small village.

And Sarah writes, he’s plopped down like so much cargo from the mover’s cart into very tall grass, seemingly alone outside a cottage.

And the passage goes this way.

For the first time in my life, I was out of the sight of humans.

For the first time in my life, I was alone in a world whose behavior I could neither predict nor fathom, a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning.

I was lost, and I did not expect to be found again.

I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face like a bully.

And Sarah writes, that last line gets me every time.

If you’ve ever been a parent or cared for young children, you can just imagine this scenario.

Absolutely, because a moment children believe that anything is possible and the fact that you might plop them down and never return seems utterly, utterly possible to them.

Right.

It could happen.

Right.

But also that encounter with nature.

If you’ve come from an urban environment into the countryside, it can be bewildering.

Share your favorite book passages with us, words@waywordradio.org.