Cuffy Bear in "The Ice Goes Out Of The River"

Farmer Green had taken his sap-buckets off the maple trees and that meant the spring was fast going. At least, that was what Mr. Bear said. And Cuffy noticed that every day there was a little less snow than there had been the day before. "The ice will soon go out," Mr. Bear said to Cuffy's mother at breakfast one morning, "and then when I cross Pleasant Valley I shall have to swim the river." Cuffy knew that his father meant Swift River. In summer Cuffy could look down from Blue Mountain and see the stream as it flashed through the valley.