Gary Paulsen
I absolutely loved this book last time so I picked it off the shelf last night to read. I read it real quick; it’s not a long book. But it’s a great book, I do recommend it.
Just a few bits from the book that I folded the page over for:
He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work. It wasn’t just that it was wrong to do, or that it was considered incorrect. It was more then that-it didn’t work. When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done, was all done with it, nothing had changed. His leg was stull hurt, it was still dark, he was still alone and the seld pity had accomplished nothing. (82)
Real time he measured in events. A day was nothing, not a thing to remember-it was just sun coming up, sun going down, some light in the middle.
But events – events were burned into his memory and so he used them to remember time, to know and remember what had happened, to keep a mental journal. (137)
Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience, waiting and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking. (145)
It was a strange feeling, holding the rifle. it somehow removed him from everything around him. 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 rifle changed him, the minute he picked it up, and he wasn’t sure he liked the change very much. He set it aside, leaning it carefully against the wall. He could deal with that feeling later. The fire was out and he used a butane lighter and a piece of birch bark with small twigs to get another one started – marveling at how east it was but feeling again that the lighter somehow removed him from where he was, what he had to know. With a ready flame he didn’t have to know how to make a spark nest, or how to feed the new flames to make them grow. As with the rifle, he wasn’t sure he liked the change. (186)
Many of the changes would prove to be permanent. Brian had gained immensely in his ability to observe what was happening and react to it; that would last him all his life. he had become more thoughtful as well, and from that time on he would think slowly about something before speaking.
Not bad things to learn, eh?
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