TroytlePower

2 weekends ago, my wife and I decided to go camping. We’d been wanting to all summer, but hadn’t been able to make it work out so far. We decided mid day on Friday to go get a spot Saturday, and had a great time. While we were getting ready to go, I heard Griffin McElroy talking about “Hatchet,” by Gary Paulsen, and the other books in the “Brian’s Saga” series, and realized that a camping trip was probably a great time to read the young adult survival story I missed as a kid.

For the unfamiliar, Hatchet is the story of a kid who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back and a hatchet. With just that tool and his ingenuity, he manages to find food, shelter, and a way to survive long enough to be rescued. I knew that rough outline before I read the book, but that was about it.

Before we headed out, I got the book downloaded on to my Kindle and realized that we didn’t have a hatchet of our to take with us; ours was in a pile of our stuff at a different house. We were only out for one day and night, so we didn’t really need a hatchet, but reading the book while I was outdoors without that handy tool on hand really made me miss it.

When we got back home, I downloaded the audio book for the next in the series, “The River”, and listened to it before we did another short camping trip that weekend. In the second book, Brian goes back in to the wilderness with a government agent, who quickly gets struck by lightning, so that the kid is on his own and has to keep this dude safe. As soon as we got our site set up for our second camping trip, we heard thunder, and I was convinced we were 100% certain to get struck by lightning.

We don’t have another camping trip planned, so I’m not sure if I want to keep reading through this series now, or wait until the third book can make some weird prediction about an impending overnight trip once one is scheduled.