1 . I was halfway across Indiana headed home to Kentucky when my car broke down. My phone was ______, too. I managed to get to a gas station, but it was Sunday in the early fall, and there was no ______ on duty. I was working my way through university then and had little money for ______ the car.

I sat alongside my car for several hours trying to ______ the heat when an older gentleman ______ to fuel his car.   He asked about my car, and I ______ my predicament (困境). To my ______, the gentleman told me that he had a daughter my age, and then he opened his trunk and ______ a tool set.

Right then and there, this total ______ examined my engine, explaining as he worked that my spark plugs (火花塞) hadn’t been charged for so long that they were ______ to function.   After about an hour, he ______ that my car was safe to finish the trip.

______ came at the hands of a stranger. ______ his clothes, working on a hot September afternoon, this man ______ a college student from disaster, just because she could have been his ______ .

2 . On sunny and warm days, I love to wander through high mountains. I also love it when fog goes down and _______ me in a state of quietness.

One day while I was visiting a mountaintop, the fog blew in. I was _______ because I’d gone there to take some photos and needed a clear shot of the mountains in the _______. Instead I was _______ the middle of a gray cloud. I carried my camera and made my _______ back to the car to wait, hoping the fog would _______.

As I sat there, I began to see things that I’d never _______ before. I spied an old tree with rough branches of interesting _______. I observed the cliffs behind me. All this new­to­me scenery _______ me back out of the car, and soon I was happily ________ a part of this landscape I’d never seen before.

As I ________ home, with a camera full of images and a heart full of ________ for the nature, I thought about what had happened.

The nature has used those times when everything around me seemed like ________ to show me things I wouldn’t have seen ________. I experienced that especially when my son was in the military. Often the weight of what he was facing covered me with ________. It was in those times that nature revealed itself most warmly.