Brian's Return (10 page)

Out ahead was the end of the lake, and out ahead of that another lake and out ahead of that the forest and out ahead of that his life . . .

Just waiting for him to find it.

He leaned forward at the waist, slipped the paddle deep into the water and pulled back again, evenly, his arms and shoulders taking the load. The canoe came alive and seemed to leap ahead.

He would follow his medicine.

This is the final book about Brian, though someday I may do a nonfiction book about those parts of my life that were like Brian’s.

Once I knew the truth of the woods, which came to me about the time I wrote
Hatchet,
once I knew what happened, I knew I would write this book. It is perhaps even true that I
always
knew I would write this book, in a way before I wrote
Hatchet
or
The
River
or
Brian’s Winter.

A thing happens when you have been taken by the bush, by wilderness. Much is made, and rightly so, of the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on people who have been in combat, and perhaps there is some of that in the effect that living in the wilderness has on a person—if such a thing can be good and not bad—for when a person has once been possessed by the wild it is not possible for him to be truly normal again.

I started hunting and trapping and fishing in the north woods of Minnesota when I was about eleven. Due to the difficult nature of my childhood I could not be home and spent much of the time—to the detriment of my grades—in the woods with either an old lemonwood bow and half a dozen homemade arrows or a worn old single-shot Remington .22 rifle that fired only half the time and never ejected right (I had to dig the expended cartridge case out with the tip of a pocketknife).

Virtually all that happens to Brian in these books has happened to me at some point or other in my life. I have been in two forced landings in light planes, though not nearly as severe as the crash Brian suffers in
Hatchet
(although that crash is based on a true incident). I have hunted large and small game extensively with a straight bow, have been attacked by moose several times, have had a bear “play” with me as the bear in this book does with Brian (it is a humbling experience to feel like prey), have had a doe jump into my canoe to get away from flies, have eaten what Brian eats, made fires and cooked the way he cooks, worked and slept beneath a canoe the way he does in this book, lived in lean-tos and holes in the ground and found and believe in my “medicine” (similar to Billy’s, mine is a crow).

For nearly twelve years I lived completely in the bush. For most of that period if I did not kill it with a bow and arrow or grow it in a garden or pick it in the woods (berries and hazelnuts) I did not eat it. I supported a family off the woods, as perhaps Brian will. We bought only salt and seasonings and clothing. All food and shelter and heat came from the bush or a garden and it must be said that the quality of the food I ate then far surpasses anything I can buy from the store now, either vegetable
or
animal (though I am now a vegetarian) and it was perhaps the healthiest time of my life.

Once you have seen the horizon, have followed it, have lived with nature in all its vicious beauty, it is impossible to come back to “normal” life. Like Brian, I tried. I bought a house in town with a yard and neighbors—because I thought that was the thing to do—and inside a week I was pacing like a panther in a cage, trying to see out, see across the town to the hills, to the trees, to the woods.

I simply could not do it. I went back to a hut in the mountains of New Mexico and though it was a small version of the bush—I had neighbors as close as three miles away and it was only twelve miles to a small town—I could see the trees and the sky and the horizon and for a time it kept me from going insane. But it was still not enough, still only pretend wilderness, and I found myself taking longer trips on a horse, days at a time, until I would hit a fence that stopped me, and in the end it was the same as before: I paced, pulled against the imaginary chain that held me, hated not being able to move toward the horizon . . . So then I discovered sled dogs and ran two Iditarods.

When I developed heart disease after running those two races I had to give up my sled dogs and could not live in northern winters, and that denied the wild to me. I could not go back to the bush as Brian does in this book, though I tried several times, and I’m not certain what would have become of me had I not rediscovered the sea.

The sea saved me, and it continues to save me. I have always loved it, and at times in my life I had small boats and sailed, not on any long trips, just to local areas in California. But I had moved away from the coast and about the time it became evident that the hut in the New Mexico mountains was still too “tame” (if that is the right word) I found the sea again, right where it has always been, bought an old thirty-eight-foot sailboat, which I spent two years restoring, and went out into what is possibly the only big wilderness left—the Pacific Ocean.

I am there now. It is the winter of 1997-98 and
El
Niño
has made it impossible for me to get across the Pacific until spring and so I sit in San Diego, repairing bits on the boat that seem to break simply because they are on a boat.

I have made two trips down to Mexico with the boat—she (boats have lives, souls, and they
are
feminine) is named
Felicity
—to see the Sea of Cortez. Last spring I took her from Mexico up the west coast of the United States, up the inside passage to Alaska, and then turned and came down the outside back to San Diego in preparation for going across to Hawaii, then down to the Marshall Islands and from there to Australia.

Unfortunately, as Brian finds on his return to the bush, man may propose, but nature disposes.
El
Niño
has intervened and is lashing the ocean between San Diego and Hawaii with storms and wild southwesterly winds that
Felicity
could not possibly buck.

And so I am writing this on a laptop while seagulls fight over garbage up in the Dumpster at the top of the public docks. There is a soft rain coming down— I can hear it pattering on the skylight hatch over my head—and I have Mozart on the tape player while I wait.

Not long. Just until the wind changes. And then I will go again—always, as Brian must always go.

Gary Paulsen

On the sloop
Felicity

San Diego Bay, February 1998

Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books:
The Winter Room,
Hatchet
and
Dogsong
. He has also written many other popular books, including
Brian’s Winter
(a companion to
Hatchet
),
My Life in Dog Years
and
Nightjohn
and its companion,
Sarny: A Life Remembered.
He and his wife, the artist Ruth Wright Paulsen, have homes in New Mexico and on the Pacific Ocean.