#brian's winter

[ihaveatypeanditstrickstergods]

As someone who has never read Hatchet, it's very funny to me that Hatchet has so many sequels. I guess they just keep finding reasons to dump that kid in the woods.

[darklingichor]

Hatchet; Brian's Winter, by Gary Paulsen

I decided to listen to these two again because I was at work when I finished my other book on my lunch break. Work hasn't been this hectic since the start of the pandemic. If I'm honest, I decided to listen to Hatchet because I like Peter Coyote 's voice, and I followed up with Brian's Winter because the nature imagery is lovely.

Last time I listened to these books and wrote about them, I focused on the way the author depicted nature and how Brian, after the plane crash was changed by it because he had to learn how to exist with it, to survive.

This time I was struck by the trial and error he had to go through to learn how to hunt, gather, and carve out a niche for himself. There's this feeling in the book that Brian has to sort of go back to the ways of early humans, he literally had to invent fire, make most of his weapons and tools.

I always tend to think of hunting and gathering cultures knowing what to do because of knowledge passed down by previous generations, but that couldn't always be the case. People moved, animals, landscape and weather changed. They had to have a bunch of "That's new..." moments.

Of course Brian doesn't go into this without anything, he has the hatchet that his mother gave him, he has modern fabrics at his disposal to use as needed, he eventually has a survival pack from the plane that gives him a knife and a sleeping bag. Without the last two things, he likely wouldn't have made it through the winter, and of course, the fabrics were mostly depleted after a while. And it seems like Brian was a curious kid before he was stranded reading and watching a lit of nature centric stuff, and that helped a lot.However, even with all that stuff baked into the narrative it was really interesting how the author managed to show how Brian adapted. From getting sick on the first set of berries to making more and more sophisticated bows and arrows to refining his shelter and making clothes. We see him screw up, figure something out, screw up again. We see him discover things by accident or learn tricks from the animals. It really does send the message to not give up and that people are pretty amazing in their ability to learn and adapt. This is a great message to have in a kid's book. It can be discouraging when you do something and it doesn't work, to show a character literally trying something, failing, learning from it and trying again, not to win something, not to prove something, but to *survive* and for *himself* I think that would speak to a lot of kids. I was an introverted kid, remarkably uncompetitive. I didn't see the point in doing something I didn't want to do just to prove I could. I would play games, but if my opponent or teammates started getting *angry* when they started to lose or when a mistake was made, I would lose interest. Why get mad to the point of hurling abuse at your friends because gravity didn't do what you wanted it to do to get the ball in the hoop or over the net? That wasn't fun, and I could be reading a book, or teaching myself how to build a two story lego house, or riding my bike through rain puddles to see how far I could make the water splash. More than once, I walked out of a game. Was I an insufferable kid at times? Oh, absolutely! But that's just how I was, and I can't think I was the only one. I mean, I did learn that it wasn't cool to just walk out of a game, but I can't say I ever really internalized what the big deal of winning was.

This book, I think shows the benefit of learning and hard work. If a kid doesn't care that everyone is going to praise them if they do a thing, or they don't care about grades (that one was not me) a story where a character is learning and doing hard stuff for a reason, is useful. Because, yes he has to do this or he's not going to live, but he's not just slogging through this stuff, he also has a sense of accomplishment when he works out how to make a fire, when he figures out how to make snowshoes And all of this is done in a way that is suspenseful, but not frightening. The teaching tone of these books aren't the "people die and happy endings don't always happen" (those stories have their place, don't get me wrong) but I don't think there is a question about whether or not Brian will survive. Kid survived a moose attack and a tornado, it would be a shitty ending if he died. I think the reader, especially a young one, would start to question if he was just going to live in the forest forever, rather than getting found, but he would live.

Something else I really like about these stories is something I don't know with be fully evident to a kid. Brian almost starts to invent culture. He is inspired to draw on his shelter wall when he has an amazing day hunting, he does other things because they "feel right" he has spiritual moments becomes aware of his place in this little world he was thrown into. He puts a good amount of store in luck. There is only a short step from luck to faith. People look for patterns, it's hard wired into us. There *has to be a reason* it is not that hard to see how someone might experience something good and be grateful for their luck, experience something bad and mourn it. Enough times of that happening, someone is going to have the thought that *something* was helping them. After all, ancient people didn't have metrology, didn't know the reasons things happened. Stuff happened, caused by invisible forces if those forces can move the clouds and stars, surely they can help or hinder people. You can sort of see Brian starting down this path, falling into the thought process of honoring nature for taking care of him and developing limits to what he should and should not be doing to nature.

I think these books are really layered and worth the read no matter how old you are.

[allthebooklove]

Just One Word Book Photo Challenge: May 3: Chills 

[toxins-private-collection]

"I've got a pet skunk who is a terrorist."

- Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen

[jewepir28997]

Top Audiobooks Kids And Young Adults - New York Book Cafe

new books for teen boys : Brian's Winter | Teen

Listen to Brian's Winter new releases new books for teen boys on your iPhone, iPad, or Android. Get any Teen BOOKS AUDIO FREE during your Free Trial

Written By: Gary Paulsen Narrated By: Richard Thomas Publisher: Listening Library (Audio) Date: March 2008 Duration: 3 hours 10 minutes

[tediousreviews]

Hatchet, Brian’s Winter, and Brian’s Return

Three reviews for the price of one this week.

One of the things that happens when someone moves into your home is that your plans and habits can change a bit. In my case, I picked up a roommate last month. And the change in question is that for the few months she'll be living with me I'm going to occasionally interrupt my normal review schedule in which I dive into the books from my past to bring you books from her past instead.

This time it's a trio of books that I probably wouldn't have bought myself from the book fair, but I think I would have enjoyed reading.

Hatchet

As a child, having your parents divorce sucks. Knowing that your mother was cheating on your father before the divorce sucks more. Fortunately, one little plane accident that gets him stranded in Canada is more than sufficient to take Brian's mind off of things.

Spoiler alert: he doesn't starve to death, get eaten by wolves, or die of dehydration after giving himself dysentery with his poor sanitation habits and lack of tools for purifying water.

Brian's Winter

At the end of Hatchet, Brian was rescued by a pilot who was lured in by the transponder it took Brian several weeks to find. But what if he'd been too stupid to activate the transponder once he'd found it. Or, perhaps it might have been damaged in the crash.

What would have happened? Well, armed with the skills and resilience he'd gained over a summer of wilderness survival, he'd have narrowly avoided dying in the winter as well.

Brian's Return

Imagine being a child who went through the plots of Hatchet and Brian's Winter? You might be pretty messed up right? You might need a good therapist, right? On the other hand you might actually get a therapist with a wilderness fetish instead and soon might find yourself lying to your parents in order to recreate your original adventures.

And, considering the amount of sheer luck you needed to survive on top of the skills you developed, there's a good chance you'd get yourself killed.

Spoiler alert: Brian doesn't die. At least within the book. But as he decides to abandon his original plans to reunite with his former benefactors and instead wander off into the middle of nowhere, there's a good chance he's not going to be long for this cruel world.

Since his benefactors are from Brian’s Winter, I can only assume that Paulsen chose to follow the alternate continuity he created for that book. Either that or the pilot that rescued him in Hatchet introduced him to the Smallhorn family before returning him to his parents.

Overall Thoughts

Altogether a good young adult wilderness survival series. The books are short, straightforward, and both easy and enjoyable to read. Paulsen's love of the wilderness practically shines through every page in the series. And while Brian is both unreasonably lucky and absurdly quick to pick up the skills he needs, the stories don’t really make light of the dangers or difficulties of wilderness survival either.

There are two other books in the series: The River, which is a direct sequel to Hatchet, and Brian's Hunt, which follows up on Brian's Return. Spoiler alert, Brian doesn't die in those books either.

[thesensiblenonsenseproject]

Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen

CHAPTER ONE

Fall came on with a softness, so that Brian didn’t realize what was in store—a hard-spined north woods winter—until it was nearly too late.

He never thought he would be here this long.

As a child, books were my best friends, even though It was the hardest friendship I’ve ever started. You see, I'm profoundly dyslexic, and I couldn’t read until the third grade.  I can’t tell you what exactly is different about how I read, but I know that there’s something just a little bit different and slower about the way it works for me.

In 5th grade I discovered an author who was to profoundly change my life: Gary Paulsen. I picked up his book Hatchet from the carefully curated bookshelves that surrounded my classroom, and it was the best playdate I’ve ever had. I’m an Eagle Scout who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and the adventure of this book resonated with me. Brian, the book's protagonist, is in about 5th grade in the book, and is in a plane crash and is stranded in the north woods of Minnesota. He survives a moose attack, a tornado, homesickness. He makes a bow and arrows, figures out how to fish, and eventually he dives into the lake to the sunken plane to retrieve a survival pack. He has to figure out how to make fire, eat, hunt, make clothes, and in Brian’s Winter, survive a brutal north woods winter.  

I was stranded as a kid, not by a remote lake, but in the suburbs of Portland. I was an odd, lonely kid, an only child, and I didn’t really know how to get along with my peers. It’s not that I don’t enjoy people—I’m happiest when I’m deep in conversation with a friend. It's just that, like reading, I was slower, and had a different way of making it work. Plus, in the ’burbs of Portland in the '90s, families just kept moving away.  

I felt stranded, and, when I look back, I think everyone in my home was pretty miserable in the ‘90s. My folks were in a loveless marriage that was slowly coming apart, my Dad traveling all the time, my Mom focusing on raising me to escape her deep unhappiness. My Dad didn't really know how to be a dad, and as a kid I just figured he didn't like me—and I never knew how much that hurt him until recently. So I tried really hard to be the best at absolutely everything, but always seemed to make him angry. My Mom loved me unconditionally, but there was something else I needed. I needed to be—I don’t know, a man? A grown-up? I wasn’t sure.

So when I read Hatchet and Brian’s Winter, it became clear to me what I should do; I should run away. It worked really well for Tom Sawyer! I mean, I had figured out how to read, so surely I could figure out how to live in the woods. If I was going to be stranded and lonely, I might as well get to enjoy the beauty of the wilderness.

I wrote all about this in my fifth-grade journal. My teacher was a little bit anxious when she read it, and called my parents. (It was a really bizarre conversation.) And while I didn't run away growing up, I decided to escape through books, Boy Scouts, and every after school activity I could possibly sign up for.  

When I went to college, the story and spirit of Brian's Winter stayed with me. I started working at a church camp so that I could be outside all summer long. I made friends, really good friends, there, and went on all kinds of adventures.   didn’t really know how to relate well with people still, I was still awkward, and had fallen in love with wandering around the woods at night. But I was starting to figure something out.

My twenties really do read like a trite essay on running away from yourself. I studied abroad my junior year of college in Scotland, making a solo trek to a super-remote island called Iona. I traveled  by train, ferries, and hitchhiking to visit this weird progressive Christian community that had rebuilt the ruins of a 13th century abbey. I came back from my semester abroad, I graduated, and tried to find myself on the railways of Europe, staying in villas, hostels, getting drunk under the Eiffel Tower listening to Parisians pop champagne corks and sing “Wonderwall” with French accents. I decided that wasn’t enough, so I took a gap year before going to seminary, and ran back to Scotland, running away from being an adult yet again. I dumped my girlfriend, realized I was gay, and worked at an outdoor center on the same remote island.

And then, well, that’s when the spell of Brian’s Winter broke.

One night, I was in the common room of the outdoor center, huddled around the peat-fueled cast-iron stove, taking with two of my friends who were lifelong outdoor guides and youth workers. They talked about their vocation, what it meant. What was it in a person that led them to do this? Andy, tall, lean, blond-haired, with a smile that warmed me in ways very different than the fire, explained that this kind of work wasn’t about running away. “You see those guys all the time,” he laughed, “running from what they’re called to. There’s something different when you couldn’t be anywhere else but here. You couldn’t be anywhere else but here, and be whole.”  

A few weeks later I was invited to lead a chapel service in the rebuilt 13th century cathedral on the isle next door. I was in my element. I got to reflect on what my time at the outdoor center meant to me, what it meant to live in community, and extend hospitality to the at-risk young people who came away from a week of staying with us to go to their homes, to build community in communities that had fallen apart under the effects of poverty and drugs. We showed them what life could be like, and then sent them away to try it at home. 

Brian’s Winter taught me that my wilderness wasn’t living remotely. It was among people. It was figuring out how to read—not books, but human cues. And my vocabulary of relationships? It was pretty stunted. I was used to reading “uninterested” or “you're a loser” from people. I was stuck making friends with guys who were tragically straight and could never be what I truly wanted them to be.  

And so, when I moved to Philadelphia—its own kind of wilderness—I set about learning a new language: that of actually belonging, of being at home and putting down roots, making friends, meeting my beloved fiancé. I stopped running from what I’m called to. And it feels different. I couldn't be anywhere else but here and be my whole self.

DAVID’S WINTER

CHAPTER ONE

The winter of 2015 came on with a softness, so that I didn’t realize what was in store until I was in love. I never thought I would be here this long.

David Norse is the first openly gay man to be ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in Philadelphia. He currently serves as Minister for Pastoral Counseling at Broad Street Ministry. He is interested in what emerges when seemingly paradoxical identities converge, and in challenging narratives that cut communities off from wholeness and thriving. David grew up in Oregon and has extensive experience working in wilderness environments, from the Cascade Mountains to the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland. He is a lover of storytelling, poetry, and music, from This American Life to Rumi to Stevie Wonder, all sources that he pulls from in his work.

[brydeswhale]

People have no appreciation for the genius that is "Brian's Winter".