Stranded in the Wild

Have you ever wondered how people stay alive in the wild?  How they don’t go crazy from being alone or eventually make a mistake and mess up so severely there’s no way to take it back.  In the Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, the driver had a heart attack while flying the plane and landed onto an abandoned island where the only survivor, Brian, lived for 54 days in the wild.  A great lesson in the book is learn from your mistakes, and don’t do it again.
   In the book, Brian made mistakes like throwing  his hatchet at the opossum in the cave.  Brian learned that the hatchet was the only tool he had and from then on he used it as a tool rather than a weapon although he made weapons with it .  Another time Brian was just picking berries when he lost his focus and was ten feet away from a live bear.  From then on Brian was always aware of what was going on around him.  In the second book, Brian’s Return, Brian was canoeing down a river and spotted a bear before the bear even spotted him.  Brian knew he had to get past the bear to get to his destination so he went past the bear, getting ten feet from it.  The bear started playing with Brian and probably would have killed Brian if he would have been unfocused or lost in thought.  
   Many people never learn from their mistakes and get injured or killed from making the same mistake.  The lesson from you learn from your mistakes is anticipate when the same circumstances come and react differently to it.  This is what Brian did and it saved his life more than once.  What Brian learned was don’t hang your head and worry about what you did wrong. Think about what happened, learn from it, and don’t make the same mistake again.