by Gary Paulsen, 1987
Children’s book, mentioned by Pat, who was reading it with/to her grandson. I read it in one day. It’s about a 13 year old boy, Brian Robeson, who is being flown up to northern Canada to spend the summer with his Dad, who is working the oil fields. His parents are newly divorced. Brian witnessed the Secret, his Mom kissing another man in a station wagon outside the mall. He has never told anyone.
He is in the plane with the pilot, a bush plane. The pilot starts having severe pains and passes gas, or poops his pants, at any rate, he stinks, and then dies of a heart attack. Brian lets the plane fly for hours until it runs out of gas near a lake and he crash lands in the lake. He survives.
All he has, tool-wise, is the hatchet his Mom gave him. It stayed on his belt through the crash. He uses it to make spears, fire, bow and arrow. He discovers turtle eggs and those are the first real food he eats.
At one point early on, he hears a plane but too late – he didn’t get his signal fire lit until after it had passed him by.
He is about 50 days into his adventure and has a nice shelter with a fire going constantly to keep away the varmints and mosquitoes, to keep him warm and dry. He’s learned so much and is eating just fine – fish, rabbits, “foolbirds” (ruffed grouse), berries (choke cherries and raspberries), hazelnuts. Things are going fine until an insane cow moose charges him as he’s washing in the lake, and tries to drown him – twice. He survives but has broken ribs. Then, that very night, a huge tornado cuts across his forest and lake. It destroys his shelter, the wall and gate he wove out of branches, his food storage place, his wood stores and almost himself. Almost total destruction. He is at his lowest point and tries to cut himself with the hatchet and die. He’s not successful. He wakes up to a new day. He sees the airplane fuselage sticking out of the water. He builds a raft, makes his way out there, chops through the fuselage, drops his hatchet and has to dive to the bottom of the lake to retrieve it, sees the dead pilot mostly eaten by fish, and finally finds the survival bag. It takes a long time to pull the survival bag out of the plane. Then to get is back to shore with the raft. When he finally does, he is exhausted. The next day, he is going through it and finds everything he needs to live easily and enough freeze dried meals for a long, long time. He also finds an emergency transmitter that he inadvertently switches on and leaves on. He is cooking his first meal, beef and potatoes, and it’s not yet done, when a float plane lands on the lake and he is rescued.
It is a good book. Wayne says it was very popular in 5th grade. It has themes of reconciliation. Although he never told anyone the Secret, he did come to terms with it and his parents’ divorce. He also reconciled himself with nature. He become one with nature out there, except with the insane moose that tried to murder him. When he found the survival bag, there was a gun, matches, pots and pans, lighters, soap, food, utensils, scissors, first-aid kit. He realized:
“Without the rifle he had to fit in, to be part of it all, to understand it and use it–the woods, all of it. With the rifle, suddenly, he didn’t have to know; did not have to be afraid or understand. He didn’t have to get close to a foolbird to kill it–didn’t have to know how it would stand if he didn’t look at it and moved off to the side.”
The epilogue is about how his parents almost got back together but didn’t. He never stopped being fascinated by food. He remains lean the rest of his life. He thinks before he speaks. That’s about it.