Question

read the passage. there are several questions about this passage.
from first skunk of spring
1
as long as we are able to be out of doors, spring speaks to us of promise, of renewal, of possibility. there are, of course, regional differences in both experience and metaphor. in some places spring happens as slowly as lake ice melts, in others places you go to bed on one winter night, and by dinnertime the next day it’s summer.
here at soul mountain, the country house / writers’ retreat i am lucky enough to own, i do not work the land, but i do live on it. from my desk i look out on “peanut pond” as it changes color. today the gray cataract of ice has shrunk to only one end of the pond; the rest dilutes with refractive depth, a dark portrait of trees and sky. though i’m still dug in for the solitary connecticut winter, i can sense the approach of spring. soul mountain’s spring season starts in march. i’m preparing the house for the arrival of new guests: i look forward to having a houseful of young poets again. i leave the house maybe only once a day now, to check the mailbox up on the road, or occasionally to take my car out of the garage and go buy provisions. the last few days i’ve heard birds calling from the thicket, and thought, “oh, spring’s coming!” and done a little internal dance.
3
i remember several past springs. when i was teaching in northfield, minnesota, i took my irish setter, piper, for several long walks every day, and i remember noticing things one spring that i’d never noticed before, and wondering whether they’d always been there and i’d just been blind, or whether the details of this particular spring were different. i remember wondering whether anyone would notice if there were ten or a hundred or a thousand little things that were different this spring, or any spring, and realizing that there would be something new to notice every spring, if i paid attention. had maple trees always had two kinds of flowers? why hadn’t i ever noticed this before? were sidewalks littered every march with red bud covers? i remember feeling that everything was, somehow, more magical than usual, and that i didn’t want to miss a thing. the world was changing, growing, unfolding, like an infant who learns several new things every day. that spring taught me the importance of attentiveness to the moment.
4
i spent one spring semester teaching english in hamburg, germany. there i walked almost every day from my apartment near the university to the beautiful promenade along the banks of alster lake, where i strolled through the crowds of lovers and families. i was savoring leaves of grass that spring. every step i took—on the cement sidewalks of the side streets lined with impeccably kept apartment buildings, and on the white gravel paths of the park, with its manicured greens, white benches, and the lake beyond—seemed, somehow, blessed by the loving sagacity and the soaring verbal beauty of whitman’s poetry: “who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him—and freely pour’d it forth....” i feel full of that “measureless ocean of love” every spring. but those spring days on the alster with walt whitman helped me to recognize and name that feeling.
5
one spring i commuted weekly by plane from my home in connecticut to a writer-in-residence position in tennessee. i experienced a double spring that year, and i recognized for the first time how clearly chronological the sequence of spring is. as infants follow an almost invariable sequence of development, so spring unfolds with its own inevitability. i would fly out of hartford as the crocuses were starting, and arrive in nashville to a riot of daffodils. i would fly out of hartford as daffodils were assembling their noisy parades, and arrive in nashville to see stately irises were assembling their noisy parades, and arrive late in the season, with its redbud trees. after their season i was too exhausted from all that flying to be able to notice what flowered next.
6
i’ve never memorized the sequence of flowerings, i’m sure gardeners know of its predictable clockwork. here, it starts with circles of green and white snowdrops growing among patches of leftover snow. then crocuses bring the first pastels. the trees pink at their branch tips, and skunk cabbage unfurls in the marsh. then a profusion of bright yellow forsythia. then the old lilac bushes lining the driveway explode with perfume. then violets, bluettes, and dandelions in the lawn. i am not a gardener, and i tend to walk through my days in a kind of absent-minded professor obliviousness. yet even i notice how each plant comes to blossom at its own time, that it will not bloom out of sequence.
7
there really is a time for everything under heaven. you don’t get lilacs at snowdrop time. spring makes you wait.
(from the dance of spring by marge piercy. copyright © 2009 by marge piercy. used by permission of the author.)
what role does paragraph 3 play in developing important ideas in the passage?

1. it introduces the fact that the author loves taking walks in the springtime.
2. it provides essential biographical information about the author’s background.
3. it reveals when the author first started to take notice of what happens during springtime.
4. it highlights the various ways in which springtime unfolds in different parts of the country.

Explanation:

To determine the role of paragraph 3, we analyze each option:

• Option 1: The paragraph is about past springs and noticing details, not just introducing a love for spring walks. Eliminate.
• Option 2: It's about past spring experiences, not biographical background (like family, education history). Eliminate.
• Option 3: The paragraph describes the author's past spring in Minnesota, where they first started noticing spring details (wondering about new things, realizing the importance of attention). This matches.
• Option 4: Paragraph 3 focuses on one location (Minnesota) and personal observations, not various parts of the country. Eliminate.

Answer:

1. It reveals when the author first started to take notice of what happens during springtime.