This is my first entry on Teen Ink. I've only just begun to see all the amazing things on this site! Thank-you Teen Ink! It would be awesome to get my work published about something I am so passionate about.

I recently read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I don't know if any of you have read it, but it was the best book that I have definitely read. It changed me in so many ways and made me desperate to read more in the series (yes there are 3 more books.) In Hatchet, Brian is goes to see his father. His parents recently got a divorce so Brian has to fly on a plane through the Canadian wilderness. The pilot ends up having a heart attack and Brian decides he must crash the plane, before it drops rapidly without any fuel left. He then makes a life for himself, struggling to survive. He learns fire, not to make fire, but of how fire came to be. He discovers it like people thousands of years ago discoverd it. He makes weapons such as bows, arrows, makes a shelter, and catctes fish. He learns how to hunt. He becomes nature within himself. Brian learns to be nature. Everything's drive if food. Food means life. Even it food means killing a moose. Brian learns to hunt rabbits, ruffled grouse, and more. He does what he can to survive. He learns lessons along the way, why trees pop when it gets cold, why to bury bones of the animals he has eaton (bear attack) and to stay away from meese. Brian gets attcked by a bear, and a moose, bud does not give up at anytime. He thinks for the future. Soon Brian stops counting the days that he will be rescued. It begins to not even matter to him anymore because he calls the woods home. He listens and he can hear a bird chirping, a snake slithering, a wolf howl, leaves brushing against the tree with wind. His mind has been trained to listen and see everything more clearly than he ever has before. Its peaceful in the woods, Brian's home. 

Reading all the descriptions in this book made me wonder what it would be like to live in the woods starting with nothing but a hatchet (ax). I began thinking about the world around me. How carless we people have become of the amazing environment we live in and take everything for granted. We've let amazing animals become extinct just because we wouldn't take the time to care. I want to become like Brian, learn things as our ansectors did before us, like discovering fire or how to skin a rabbit and make fleece rabbit clothes. I want to learn how to listen and hear hundreds of individual sounds in a forest, or even a city. I want to see things, beautiful things that people would often skip over. I want to be able to read the sky, taste the air, and know if a storm is coming. I want to be like Brian. And I'm going to try. I'm going to try and learn the world around me. Actually learn. Have fun. See a forest and explore! This book has inspired me so much and I hope it does the same for you. It has totally changed my view on life and all the treasures that Earth provides. I will learn. I will explore. I will read. I will seek. I will find my adventure.

-Saxobeat518