Gary Paulsen
1. PAULSEN IS A MAN OF THE LAND.
From a young age, Gary Paulsen was rounding up his own meals in the forest, but also providing his own clothing and shelter, too. He told TeachingBooks.net in a 2010 interview, “I was raised on farms by people who didn't have Wal-Mart. They had to make their own sleds, harnesses, clothing, etc.”
2. ... AND HE'D STILL RATHER MAKE HIS OWN CLOTHES.
Even today, he prefers many homemade products to store-bought ones. “Look at Inuit clothing. Their stuff still works better than Cabela's. I've made my own parkas, mukluks, footgear, and it is good to 60 degrees below zero. All I did was copy the patterns that came down from the Inuits.”
3. HE’S A BIT OF A MISANTHROPE.
Paulsen is happy to spend his time in all …show more content…
During that time, he frequently “fostered” himself in the woods away from his parents, whose rocky marriage made Paulsen’s young life unhappy. Among other things, that meant he needed to find his own food, often by extending its definition. In his 2001 non-fiction work Guts: The True Stories Behind ‘Hatchet’ and the Brian Books, Paulsen talks foraging and scavenging (and goes beyond comparatively tasty mouthfuls of grubs) in the chapter “Eating Eyeballs and Guts or Starving: The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition," pointing out that hunger is “the best …show more content…
As a younger man, he was in two forced landings (but not crashes) in bush planes like Brian’s. He told NYPL chatters, “I thought as we went down that if we lived through it I was going to write about it. And everything in the book is what I've done, hunting with a bow, living off the woods, the moose attack. I can still do it.”
8. PAULSEN’S SNOW CAVE EXPERIENCE CAME IN HANDY.
While writing Brian's Winter, which “imagined what it would have been like if Brian had not gotten rescued [at Hatchet’s end] and had to live through the winter,” Paulsen disagreed with his editors, who told him he couldn’t “have Brian sleeping in a snow cave because he would die,” and argued his point from personal experience: “I told them, ‘No, I've been in snow caves. It's okay.’ I was trying to tell them that snow caves are safe for one night. You've got to move every day, because the ice starts to melt over your head."
9. BUT HE NEVER (SUCCESSFULLY) ATE TURTLE
From a young age, Gary Paulsen was rounding up his own meals in the forest, but also providing his own clothing and shelter, too. He told TeachingBooks.net in a 2010 interview, “I was raised on farms by people who didn't have Wal-Mart. They had to make their own sleds, harnesses, clothing, etc.”
2. ... AND HE'D STILL RATHER MAKE HIS OWN CLOTHES.
Even today, he prefers many homemade products to store-bought ones. “Look at Inuit clothing. Their stuff still works better than Cabela's. I've made my own parkas, mukluks, footgear, and it is good to 60 degrees below zero. All I did was copy the patterns that came down from the Inuits.”
3. HE’S A BIT OF A MISANTHROPE.
Paulsen is happy to spend his time in all …show more content…
During that time, he frequently “fostered” himself in the woods away from his parents, whose rocky marriage made Paulsen’s young life unhappy. Among other things, that meant he needed to find his own food, often by extending its definition. In his 2001 non-fiction work Guts: The True Stories Behind ‘Hatchet’ and the Brian Books, Paulsen talks foraging and scavenging (and goes beyond comparatively tasty mouthfuls of grubs) in the chapter “Eating Eyeballs and Guts or Starving: The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition," pointing out that hunger is “the best …show more content…
As a younger man, he was in two forced landings (but not crashes) in bush planes like Brian’s. He told NYPL chatters, “I thought as we went down that if we lived through it I was going to write about it. And everything in the book is what I've done, hunting with a bow, living off the woods, the moose attack. I can still do it.”
8. PAULSEN’S SNOW CAVE EXPERIENCE CAME IN HANDY.
While writing Brian's Winter, which “imagined what it would have been like if Brian had not gotten rescued [at Hatchet’s end] and had to live through the winter,” Paulsen disagreed with his editors, who told him he couldn’t “have Brian sleeping in a snow cave because he would die,” and argued his point from personal experience: “I told them, ‘No, I've been in snow caves. It's okay.’ I was trying to tell them that snow caves are safe for one night. You've got to move every day, because the ice starts to melt over your head."
9. BUT HE NEVER (SUCCESSFULLY) ATE TURTLE