the smell of wood, 1 sweet, greeted me even before i sat down at the round table. as if breathing along with the trees, i felt a simple, 2（原始的，简单的） joy when admiring those furniture and home articles shaped and carved out of 3（雪松） in the heritage museum village of san antonio, an old-time riverside town down south in the united states.
the 4, arnold, came from a family of carpenters. as a vietnam war veteran, he related to me, a visitor from asia, how he had fought against the vietcong guerrillas in the jungle.
his dearest memory, he said, was that of a 5（混合） of tropical smells of the rain forest, in which he had to move with the utmost（极度的） caution, trembling with fear that the 6 enemy would attack from anywhere, any moment. what calmed him down, he recalled, was the 7（香味） of wood as he, holding his rifle, was lying 8 against the trunk of a large tree, sticking himself to the coarse bark.
after the war, arnold started to live by working on wood, like his ancestors. among his finest carpentry works was a rocking-chair, in which his daughter was now seated, reading. i picked out a tube-shaped pot with a lid. 9 out of a block, the objet d'art well preserved the material's colour in various shades, the clear annual rings, the original cracks and nodes -- what a 10 of the mystique（奥秘） of life!
lifting the lid, i savoured the fragrance of wood, feeling the natural power that had helped arnold overcome his fear -- fragrance in war, which sounds like a poet's nonsense.
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