1 . My name is Miranda Gibson. I have been at the top of a tree for five months now. Some people might wonder________on earth I would choose to do that.

I have walked through this forest many times. On December 12, 2011, ________rolled into the forest and the destruction (摧毁) began. I couldn’t________the thought that these forests would be________ forever. So, on December 14, 2011, I packed up my life, ________of my job plans, and climbed 60 meters to the top of this tree. I have been here ever since.

Life in the tree top can be________at times. I have times when I feel frustrated (沮丧的) and wish I could________, to anywhere, just have a ________of scenery for a minute! There are times too, when I feel terribly________.I miss my friends and family.________these times, I find myself loving the________.

Living on the tree has been inspiring. I am willing to________ here for as long as it takes,________I honestly hope it won’t be too________before I can put my feet on the ground below and stand in a forest that will never be________.

2 . It was six years ago that something unforgettable happened. My wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding _______ that year. We drove from Ontario into Alberta, then southward into Glacier National Park in Montana, and _______ to Yellowstone National Park.

It was a _______ spring day, and the Beartooth Highway had opened for the season just days before. Alongside the road, there was still a great amount of snow there. The scenery was so impressive that we made lots of _______ to record memories with my camera. At the highest point of the highway, I stopped at a lookout to catch the _______ views, with my wife in the center of my camera lens.

There were not many cars on the road. Sometimes, cars with energetic young tourists _______. And then we heard a motorcycle in the distance. The driver of the motorcycle, who wore dirty clothes, _______ behind our cars. As he _______ us, his only words were, “Give me your camera and get over there with your wife.” I must _______ I felt nervous that we might be robbed where we just created some beautiful memories. ________, he just took a picture of us, handed back my camera and rode off ________we could express our ________. The photo he took is one of the most valuable and ________ of our trip.

I learned my lesson somewhere I ________ expected it. We should never judge a man by his ________. If the motorcycle driver reads this story and remembers the situation, we would like to say “Thank you” to him.

3 . Since the beginning of the summer in 2022, China has been sweltering under the worst heatwave in decades. A number of people in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Sichuan provinces were diagnosed with thermoplegia (热射病), the most severe form of heatstroke, and some even died of this disease.

In a warming world, the hazards of heatwaves are increasing. “Over the past four decades, the main drivers of the large increase in heatwave-related deaths in China are the rapid increase in the frequency of heatwaves, followed by population growth, population aging, and rising baseline mortality (基线死亡率),” said Prof. Huang Cunrui, a researcher from Tsinghua University. According to a study, the number of deaths caused by heatwaves in China has increased rapidly since 1979, from 3679 persons per year in the 1980s to 15,500 persons per year in the 2010s.

High temperatures would accelerate the loss in soil moisture (水分). What’ s more, each additional degree of warming will increase crop losses to insects by 10 - 25 percent, threatening food security for billions of people. China has witnessed a range of extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall, flooding, tornadoes, and record heatwaves this year. Meteorological officials said the country had an average temperature of 21.3 degrees Celsius in June, 0.9 degrees Celsius higher than the same period on average, and the highest record for the same period since 1961.

Experts say that while extreme summer heat is not entirely new, these sorts of occurrences could be something that becomes a standard part of life, requiring people to start learning how to cope with heatwaves that may continue for the rest of summer and well into the future.

Remember that even healthy, young athletes can be harmed by extreme heat, so every activity should be evaluated when extreme heat hits. There are some ways to stay safe during extreme heat events, such as drinking plenty of water, looking for shade or remaining in shade when outside, and avoiding cooking large meals.

4 . If a president, a legendary philosopher, and one of the best-selling authors of all time credited the same secret for their success, would you try to follow it too? What if the secret was something you already knew how to do? In fact, you probably do it every day. Here’s what Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Thomas Jefferson: “Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.” And Charles Dickens made his point: “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish (死亡).”

Researchers have traced numerous connections between walking and generating ideas. A Stanford University study found that participants were 81 percent more creative when walking as opposed to sitting. According to the study, walking outside — versus on a treadmill (跑步机) — produces the most novel and highest-quality ideas in participants who walked and then sat down to do creative work.

The movement aspect of walking is obviously key. You’ve probably heard the phrase Exercise your creativity, which refers to the brain as muscle. Our creative mindset is triggered by physical movement, which is exactly why walking — with your dog, a friend, or alone — feeds creative thinking. Just by going outside, you are stepping out of your habitual surroundings and your comfort zone, which is necessary if you want to open your mind to new possibilities.

Research has shown that immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multimedia and technology, increased performance on a creative problem-solving task by a full 50 percent in a group of hikers.

So why not set a creativity goal that starts with walking? Turn off your phone and give yourself the chance to be present in the world, to hear conversations and natural sounds, to notice the way people move, the way the sun reflects in a puddle. Walk not just for exercise. Walk for wonder.

7 . It was just after sunrise on a June morning. “Nicolo,” whose real name cannot be _________ to the public because of Italy’s privacy laws, _________ working the whole night at a factory in Turin. As he often did, he stopped by the “after work auction (拍卖)”. There, among many other things, Nicolo spotted two paintings he thought would look _________ above his dining room table. Nicolo and another bidder _________ until Nicolo finally won the paintings for $32.

When Nicolo retired and went to live in Sicily, he _________ the paintings with him. His son, age 15, who had _________ an art appreciation class, thought that there was something _________ about the one with a young girl sitting on a garden chair. It was signed (签名)”Bonnato” or so he thought, but when he _________ it, he only found “Bonnard,” a French _________ he had never heard of. He bought a book and was __________ to find a picture of the artist Pierre Bonnard sitting on the same chair in the same __________ as his father’s painting.

“That’s the garden in our picture,” Nicolo’s son told his father. They __________ learned that the painting they __________ was called “The Girl with Two Chairs.” The __________ called the Italian Culture Ministry; the official confirmed that the painting was __________ and worth as much as $50 million.

8 . Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are ________ in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experienced ill fortune. I ________ notices in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my ________. Over the years I interviewed them, watched their lives and had them ________ various experiments.

I carried out a simple ________ to discover whether their differences in luck was due to differences in their ability to ________ opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had ________ placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying “Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50.”

This ________ took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to ________ it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more ________ than lucky people, and this anxiety affects their ability to notice the ________. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to gatherings focused on finding their perfect partner and miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers ________ to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there ________ just what they are looking for. My research eventually showed that lucky people create good fortune via four ________. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition (直觉), create self-fulfilling prophesies (预官) via positive expectations, and adopt a “never say die” attitude that ________ bad luck into good.

9 . Kimberly and I had planned a trip to Europe for a long time, but we encountered some curveballs. Getting the departure time wrong, we had to ________ from the original train trip to a ship one.

Boarding the ship, we ________ it was not like a spacious hotel. The room was incredibly tight. The ________ in the small bathroom was a spout (喷头) connected to the sink. You turned it on and sprayed yourself,________ the rest of the room.

The week-long ship travel was full of ________. There were people from diverse backgrounds speaking different languages. We had stopovers on ________ of all sizes, where we cycled 30-40 kilometers. Then there were whole gales (狂风) — so fierce that even the buses couldn’t pass for safety ________. So finally we ________ back home.

We still appreciated the experience. Our real passion was about the ________ rather than the destination — the missed rides, the ________ ship, the mixture of cultures, and all the ________.

Sometimes people are so ________ to their comfortable life that it scares them to be off the beaten track. Yet, once out of their comfort zone, the different experiences are what actually ________. Mixing things up, trying new things, seeing something through another person’s eyes, being ________ to adventure — this is how you create ________.