Free Guts by Gary Paulsen Page A

perhaps a better phrase might be odd aspects of familiar game and fish, I found I was ready for almost anything and that almost nothing would go to waste. This is not so astonishing really, when you consider that this practice was common among natives in most early cultures, and while much of it has been forgotten because of neglect and a bounty of cheap, readily available food, there are still sources for the knowledge.
    I was running my first Iditarod and pulled into a village along the Bering Sea early in the day. This in itself was strange because for some reason I seemed to arrive at all the villages in the middle of the night. But it was early, before noon, and I’d run all night and was tired, as I thought the dogs were, but they suddenly took off at a dead run, passing the checkpoint where I was to sign in, barreling down the village street until they came to a small dwelling where a little boy was kneeling over the carcass of a freshly killed seal. The dogs had smelled it, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I finally got the snow hook buried in the packed snow and stopped them before they piled on top of the boy. I was terrified they might do him some injury—he was about six years old and small—but he seemed unconcerned and turned slowly when I pulled up. His mouth and chin were bloody and I could see that he had been sucking fresh blood out of a hole cut in the seal’s neck. He smiled at me and gestured and said, “You want some?”
    It was a generous offer and I didn’t feel right rejecting it so I nodded and leaned down and tasted it. It was not unpleasant, although I would have preferred it cooked—as I’d eaten blood sausage, which I made by baking blood and flour in a bread pan—and I nodded and thanked him. Later I would see him walking down a passage between buildings eating straight Crisco out of a can with two fingers as if it were ice cream. Still friendly and courteous, he offered me a twofinger scoop of the white fat, but I thanked him and turned it down.
    When I set out to write the Brian books I was concerned that everything that happened to Brian should be based on reality, or as near reality as fiction could be. I did not want him to do things that wouldn’t or couldn’t really happen in his situation. Consequently I decided to write only of things that had happened to me or things I purposely did to make certain they would work for Brian.
    One of the hardest was to start a fire with a hatchet and a rock. I cast around for days near a lake in the north woods, searching for a rock that would give off sparks when struck with the dull edge of a hatchet. I spent better than four hours getting it to work. It seemed impossible. The sparks would fly and die before they hit tinder, or they would head off in the wrong direction, or not be hot enough, or some dampness in the tinder would keep it from taking. But at last, at long last, a spark hit just right and there was a tendril of smoke and then a glowing coal and, with gentle blowing, a tiny flame, and then a fire. I can’t think of many things, including Iditarods or sailing the Pacific, that affected me as deeply as getting that fire going; I felt as early man must have felt when he discovered fire, and it was very strange but I didn’t want to put it out. Even though I had plenty of matches and could easily start a new fire, there was something unique, something intense and important about this one campfire.
    My one failure was eating a raw turtle egg. I finished
Hatchet
in the spring, while I was running dogs and training for my first Iditarod. This was in northern Minnesota, not far from the Canadian border, in thick forest near hundreds of small lakes. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth and because of my heart trouble I can no longer take the winters up there, but I still miss it and remember my time there only with joy and wonder.
    In the spring and early summer,