Mark Harrison is a thirteen year old boy who is obsessed with hiking and backpacking. In the book The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen, Mark has finally convinced his parents to let him backpack by himself across an abandoned missile range and he couldn’t be more excited, until a strange blue light teleports him far into the future where the world has devolved into the days of swords and arrows.
After, being in the new environment for a while mark begins to worry about how he will get home or if he will get home at all. He starts looking for the blue light that brought him to the place he’s in. He realizes he’s in the middle of a forest so he decides to make a shelter. After some painstaking work and a couple of days he finishes his tree house and now looks for food and nourishment having finished all he had had in his hiking backpack. As he goes deeper into the forest mark finds that the forest darkens the farther in that he goes. In this part of the forest Mark finds a group of monkey like creatures that throw coconut like objects at him. Mark is at first angered but then sees one of the creatures eating what they were throwing at him. He collects a few of the coconuts and heads back to his tree house. The next day Mark Heads back into the dark part of the forest having finished all of the coconuts and this time sneaks in so to not be heard by the monkeys. While he is there he is startled when he hears a howl in the darkness of the forest. The monkeys go wild with horrid screeches and coconut throwing so Mark flees in the commotion but he doesn’t notice that one of the monkeys follows him back to his tree house. He finds an alternative food source and makes weapons now that he knows that something big lies hidden within the dark parts of the forest. After a couple of days he decides to take a long trip and won’t come back every night to his tree house. He offers the monkey the opportunity to come, since he and mark became best friends