81 pages • 2 hours read
Jean Craighead GeorgeMy Side of the Mountain
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “In Which I Hole Up in a Snowstorm”
During the middle of a snowstorm in early December, Sam Gribley sits inside his hollowed-out tree home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Sam writes a journal entry about his adventure, which he says began eight months prior when he ran away from home to live off the land. He stays warm from a small fire he’s built inside the tree house; he stays well fed and healthy from eating nuts and berries, venison, fish, and small game, which Sam keeps a supply of inside the walls of the tree home.
A few days later the snowstorm ends, allowing Sam to leave his tree and explore the surrounding snowy forest. He admits to the reader that he felt scared but is now excited to have survived his first snowstorm. Sam also mentions that he has been preparing for winter since last May, when he first arrived in the mountains and learned how to build a fire, find plants, and catch animals and fish to eat.
Sam recalls the third day in December, when this snowstorm arrived: He describes the sky darkening, the temperature dropping, and the forest becoming quiet. Sam admits that these ominous conditions made him contemplate running back to his home in New York, where, in contrast, “a snowstorm always seemed very friendly” (8). Sam plainly describes his 11-person family, who still live back in New York City, but then goes into greater detail about his Great-grandfather Gribley. As Sam recalls learning from his father, Great-grandfather Gribley attempted to build a farm in the Catskill Mountains but failed. Sam also remembers vividly when his father warned him “the land is no place for a Gribley” (9). In spite of this warning and his great-grandfather’s past failure, Sam now lives close to a beech tree with his Gribley surname carved in it. Sam thinks to himself, contrary to what his father says, “I knew that the land was just the place for a Gribley” (9).
Chapter 2 Summary: “In Which I Get Started on This Venture”
The story flashes back to May, when Sam leaves his city home and runs away to find the abandoned Gribley farm in the Catskills. Sam takes the train and then hitches rides from strangers into the mountains. When Sam tells one truck driver about his plans to camp in the forest, the trucker driver laughs at Sam in the same way everybody else, including Sam’s father, did over the idea of Sam’s venture.
After walking a mile or so into the woods, Sam sits down and uses a penknife to whittle twigs to make a fishing hook. Sam struggles for some time to find any fish and fears that he may starve to death. Eventually Sam gets a bite, but the fishhook comes apart, and the fish swims away with Sam’s bait. He refuses to give up, though, and because of his determination, Sam soon catches five little trout. Shortly after, the nighttime darkness arrives, and Sam, unable to make a fire, crawls into a poorly constructed tent made of hemlock branches feeling hungry, cold, and miserable. Sam tells the reader that he still feels embarrassed over all the mistakes he made on the first night, admitting that he was stupid and scared.
The next morning Sam finds a house near the highway with lights and smoke coming out of its chimney. Sam knocks on the door and is greeted by an old man named Bill. Having gotten no sleep the night before, Sam falls asleep comfortably in a rocking chair near a stove fire. As Sam sleeps, Bill cooks the trout that Sam caught the day before. Bill feeds Sam a robust meal of fish, bread, and oatmeal and then teaches Sam how to make a fire properly.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Manner in Which I Find Gribley’s Farm”
Sam leaves Bill’s house the next day, feeling confident that knowing how to make a fire will greatly aid in his survival. Sam hitches a few rides to the town of Delhi in search of his great-grandfather’s beech tree with the indentation of “Gribley” on it. After he is unsuccessful in finding this beech tree and the Gribley farmland, Sam decides to go to the library and look up some old maps that might tell him where his family’s old property is located.
Sam receives help from a friendly librarian named Miss Turner, who is able to find Gribley’s farm and draws a map so that Sam can find it. With this map, Sam returns to the mountains and soon finds the Gribley property. Once there, Sam prioritizes food and warmth over building shelter. He catches a big catfish and, with the fire-making skills Bill taught him, enjoys his first cooked meal. Sam then writes a letter to Bill, informing him of his accomplishment, though ultimately stuffs the letter in his pocket because he is unsure of Bill’s last name and how to send it to him. The chapter concludes with Sam relishing in this moment of feeling warm and well fed by his own doing, telling the reader, “never have I enjoyed a meal as much as that one, and never have I felt so independent again” (24).
Chapter 4 Summary: “In Which I Find Many Useful Plants”
The following morning Sam notices some birds hanging around a nearby maple tree. Sam eats a flower off of this tree, remembering a manual he read that suggested humans should watch birds and other animals to learn what is edible in the forest. The flower doesn’t taste very good, and so Sam decides to go fishing instead. He collects some freshwater mussels from a nearby stream and eats them.
Sam spends the rest of the day exploring the Gribley property more. He finds the foundation of the old Gribley farmhouse, which is now in ruins. Sam takes note of the various food sources—a big creek for fish and water, various trees with fruits and nuts—and begins creating a map to mark these key spots. Sam also notices the diversity of tree types: “Most of the acreage was maple and beech, some pine, dogwoods, ash; and here and there a glorious hickory” (26). In a mountain meadow, Sam comes upon some old, giant birch, maple, and oak trees, which give Sam the idea for a tree house.
Chapter 5 Summary: “This Is About the Old, Old Tree”
Sam begins noticing the many people hiking, camping, and hunting in the Catskill Mountains during the summer months, and he fears that they will see a young boy like himself, alone in the forest, and take him back to the city. For that reason Sam decides to prioritize building his tree house, which will give him somewhere to hide. He gets to work using his ax to dig away at the rotting trunk of this tree, attempting to create a cave-like home inside of it. Sam works hard on hollowing out this tree but soon becomes hungry and exhausted. After bathing in a nearby gorge, Sam stumbles into a patch of dogtooth violets and enjoys a “salad type” lunch while he hunts for food. Sam fails to capture a bird to eat but takes some crow eggs to boil and eat with his salad.
While cooking lunch, Sam realizes that it would be much easier and faster to use fire to burn out the inside of the tree, in the same way that Indians dug out canoes using fire. Sam decides that he should gather water beforehand to put out the fire, so as not to burn the entire tree down, but remembers that he has no buckets to transport the water from the creek. Sam comes to the conclusion that instead of water he can use mud to smother the fire. This plan sets Sam on a nice routine for several days, where he is able to efficiently work on his tree house while also having enough energy to gather food and stay nourished.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The opening chapters of My Side of the Mountain introduce the story’s protagonist, Sam Gribley, who also serves as the first-person narrator. Sam uses journal entries, which he’s written over the past year of living in the Catskill Mountains, to tell the story of how he ran away from home and survived on his own. Chapter 1 begins in December, eight months into Sam’s adventure, when he experiences his first snowstorm. When describing this storm, Sam speaks directly from one of his journal entries, which is signified by the use of quotations. He also lets the reader know that he wrote this entry last winter, which implies that Sam already succeeded in surviving this snowstorm, as well as the entire winter season.
As we’ll come to understand later, the winter months serve as the story’s climax because winter is the most feared and difficult season for Sam to survive. While it is never explicitly revealed why the author chooses to structure the story by starting at the climax, this approach gives readers an expectation for what Sam’s adventure will eventually lead to. Sam admits to his own stupidity and naivety during the early days of his adventure in Chapters 2-5, far from the wilderness expert capable of surviving a harsh winter that he eventually matures into.
In Chapter 2 the story flashes back to when Sam departs from his city home. Sam struggles in these early days to apply survival techniques that he’s read about in books to real practice. It takes many attempts for Sam to catch a fish on his first day. Even once he catches a few trout, Sam then fails to make a fire and thus can’t cook the fish. Additionally, Sam builds a makeshift shelter completely exposed to the wind, and he goes to bed on his first night both cold and hungry. These events set up an early motif about learning from experience. While these early failures cause Sam misery, they provide him the hands-on experience he needs to survive in the long run.
On the second day, Sam learns how to properly make a fire from Bill, an older man who provides Sam valuable insight on fire making. As much as Sam wishes to be independent—a key theme in the story—which is a huge motivating factor for why he runs away from home in the first place, Sam still relies on the help of others. There is Bill, as well as Miss Turner, the librarian, who provides Sam with key information so that he can become more self-sufficient later on.
Self-doubt is another motif of these opening chapters and plays an important role for the story’s protagonist. In the opening chapter, Sam tells the reader about his dad warning him, “the land is no place for a Gribley” (9). Several people, including Sam’s father, laugh at the idea of Sam actually running away into the mountains. Where most kids would run back home after a day, by Chapters 4 and 5 we see Sam already mastering the ability to fish and make fires. These essential building blocks allow Sam to become self-sufficient and survive many months in the Catskills. As Sam gains more and more experience, his self-doubt wanes.
Sam’s overcoming of self-doubt leads into his ability to grow, mature, and become independent. Part of this maturity is realized as Sam figures out the necessity of creating plans and thinking ahead to survive. This process is on display when Sam constructs his tree home. At first he just hacks away at the tree with his ax, but then Sam steps back and devises a more sensible burning method.
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