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awful,
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Gary Paulsen |
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The mosquitoes. Tearing at him, clouds of them, the awful, ripping, thick masses of the small monsters trying to bleed him dry.
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Gary Paulsen |
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Y)ou didn't want somebody running around smiling and saying, 'We'll get by,' when the house was on fire; you wanted somebody to yell 'fire!
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Gary Paulsen |
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Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve 'This Side of Wild' Excerpt
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Gary Paulsen |
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All I need is some barbecue sauce," he said aloud, grease dripping down his chin. "And a Coke . . ." When"
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Gary Paulsen |
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live in sound, always in noise. Perhaps because it is so constant, the art of listening to them falls off, and so many things they say are not heard, are swallowed in the overall
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Gary Paulsen |
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It stopped him, the idea of giving thanks. At first his mind just stopped and he thought, for what? For the plane crash, for being here? I should thank somebody for that? Then a small voice, almost a whisper, came into his mind and all it said was: It could have been worse; you could have been down in the plane with the pilot. And
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Gary Paulsen |
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I fell off a dogsled down a frozen waterfall and landed on sharp ice on a kneecap. It was so agonizing, I thought, seriously, that my heart would stop. But I found that my whole dog team loved and worried about me so much, they curved downstream and worked back up to me to surround me as I lay clutching my lacerated knee, whimpering and pushing their warm bodies against me. I remember the love, the dog love, much more than the shattered kne..
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Gary Paulsen |
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The hatchet. The key to it all. Nothing without the hatchet. Just that would take all his thanks. And
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Gary Paulsen |
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You never beat the game...You go in, take what you need, get out. Never stay too long and never, never try to whip the game. Stay there too long and they figure you out, start chewing at the corners on you, know your betting. Then maybe two, three of them get together and whipsaw you.
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Gary Paulsen |
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He reached now and ran one of Gretchen's soft ears through his gnarled, bent fingers, like silk through barbwire. "And I never saw it until I started with Gretchen. Got her to sit one day. The same day, she looked a long time at me and at a piece of cookie"--and here she perked up, ears more alert with the word "cookie"--"in my hand, and she saw the cookie and my eyes and then she sat. Clean and down. As much as if she'd said, 'I'll sit and..
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Gary Paulsen |
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For those of you who wish to get a feel for it, get in the car and bring it up to fifty miles an hour and then stick your head and arms outside and, while driving, try to fold up a simple bath towel in the wind
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sailing
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Gary Paulsen |
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But perhaps more than his body was the change in his mind, or in the way he was--was becoming. I am not the same, he thought. I see, I hear differently.
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Gary Paulsen |
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Ugly, he thought. Very, very ugly. And he was, at that moment, almost overcome with self-pity. He was dirty and starving and bitten and hurt and lonely and ugly and afraid and so completely miserable that it was like being in a pit, a dark, deep pit with no way out. He sat back on the bank and fought crying. Then let it come and cried for perhaps three, four minutes. Long tears, self-pity tears, wasted tears.
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Gary Paulsen |
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most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn't work.
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Gary Paulsen |
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The answer to his problem had come to
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Gary Paulsen |
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Then we knew he was lying.
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Gary Paulsen |
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berries he would have to eat the gut cherries again
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Gary Paulsen |
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And doing what is good for you is always the worst thing. Even if it works out all right in the end, it is the worst thing when it first happens--just the way things that seem good for you can turn out bad, bad as dirt.
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Gary Paulsen |
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school
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Gary Paulsen |
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All I need is some barbecue sauce," he said aloud, grease dripping down his chin. "And a Coke . . ."
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Gary Paulsen |
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How could he? The
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Gary Paulsen |
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All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just one thing. I poked my leg with an arrow. There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works. It must not have been a broadhead because it didn't go in very deep. Good.
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canoe
tent
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Gary Paulsen |
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My name is Brian Robeson and I am thirteen years old and I am alone in the north woods of Canada. All
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Gary Paulsen |
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heron,
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Gary Paulsen |
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Brian had once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things.
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Gary Paulsen |
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Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot's seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But..
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Gary Paulsen |
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So. So. So here I am." And there it is, he thought. For"
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Gary Paulsen |
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Kind of like a pear, he had thought, with a point on one end and a fat little body; a flying pear.
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Gary Paulsen |
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he wasn't sure if it was good and clean or not. He
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Gary Paulsen |
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My name is Brian Robeson and I am thirteen years old and I am alone in the north woods of Canada.
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Gary Paulsen |
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He was not the same and would never be again like he had been. That was one of the true things, the new things. And the other one was that he would not die, he would not let death in again.
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Gary Paulsen |
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Gone. We were out in the country and everything slowed down into rolling hills covered with snow. There were trees, but no leaves, and I could not remember seeing anything so white and clean. Winter in the city was gray and the snow was dirty, but out here it was so bright it hurt my eyes and I had to turn away.
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countryside
snow
train-ride
trains
winter
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Gary Paulsen |
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demanding. He turned to see Derek, who was coming up the back of the hill. "See the fish--"
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Gary Paulsen |
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Sometimes it would be nice if life just kept happening the way it's happening, if things got to a good place and just stayed there, didn't change.
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Gary Paulsen |
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unstable, the
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Gary Paulsen |
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There's nothing wrong with bad habits...Where would we be without our bad habits? They're what separates us from the dreary souls amongst us.
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Gary Paulsen |
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If you keep walking back from good luck, he thought, you'll come to bad luck.
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Gary Paulsen |
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gun
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Gary Paulsen |
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hundred-mile
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Gary Paulsen |
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In measured time forty-seven days had passed since the crash. Forty-two days, he thought, since he had died and been born as the new Brian. When the plane had come and gone it had put him down, gutted him and dropped him and left him with nothing.
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Gary Paulsen |
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Had it been just the two of us with the flock, I am sure it would have been a complete disaster. But Louie came with a helper, partner, friend, second brain: a border collie named (he must have wanted the similarities in names) Louise, and she quickly--after watching me for a moment and seeing how useless I was--took over completely.
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Gary Paulsen |
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So this summer, this first summer when he was allowed to have "visitation rights" with his father, with the divorce only one month old, Brian was heading north. His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit. He was working in the oil fields of Canada, up on the tree line where the tundra started and the forests ended. Brian was riding up from New York..
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Gary Paulsen |
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run
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Gary Paulsen |