How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Though I ran sled dogs for close to ten years, did some twenty-two thousand miles with them, this book is not about sled dogs or running them. (1.1)
This is the first line of the book. It establishes Paulsen as an expert on both the outdoors and dogs.
Quote #2
I had gotten ahead of Snowball when she stopped to examine a pile of buffalo droppings. As always, I was barefoot…. (2.37)
Paulsen first established his love of outdoor adventure in the Philippines, with Snowball. Here's a handy tip from Shmoop's Outdoors Department: wherever there are buffalo droppings, there should be shoes.
Quote #3
When I was twelve, living in a small town named Twin Forks in northern Minnesota, an uncle gave me a Remington .22 rifle he'd bought at a hardware store for ten dollars. I ran to the woods. (3.2)
Though Paulsen doesn't write about it much, we know that he had a rough time with his alcoholic parents at home. Going into the woods was a form of escape.
Quote #4
I lived and breathed to hunt, to fish. (3.3)
Living in the basement wasn't much of a life. To Paulsen, hunting was life. Literally, at some points—his parents were too busy being drunk to buy food for him, so he lived on what he caught or shot.
Quote #5
The maples were red gold and filtered the sunlight so that you could almost taste the richness of the light, and before long I added a surplus army blanket, rolled up over the pack, and I would spend the nights out as well. (3.5)
In this beautiful description, Paulsen's love of nature couldn't be more clear.
Quote #6
It was not loud but it was perfect—an exact woof […]. It was so pointed, so decisive and focused, I knew exactly what he wanted. […] "The dog," I said, "is ready to eat." (6.33, 6.35)
Paulsen is really in tune with the animals around him. It's almost like he speaks their language.
Quote #7
I once came home with a dozen angel food cakes, forty pints of whipping cream, and fifty pints of strawberries. I dumped all this in the trough and watched Fred and the pig put their heads under, looking for berries and bits of cake and snorting bubbles of cream as they hunted. (7.26)
This is a funny example of the world of nature becoming more domesticated. Most dogs—or pigs, for that matter—don't eat strawberry shortcake. When given the opportunity, though, we guess they're suckers for junk food like all of us.
Quote #8
We drove to Alaska from Minnesota. It was a major undertaking to drag a trailer holding twenty dogs in back of a 1960 half-ton Chevy pickup, in December, through countryside so daunting that many people hesitate to drive it even in the summer. (8.12)
Paulsen's love of nature and longing for adventure go hand-in-hand. Maybe sometimes it leads him to make unwise decisions or take serious risks. Do you detect a little pride in this passage?
Quote #9
We lived on the edge of the northern bush and were frequently visited by the natives of that wilderness. Porcupines, skunks, wolves, foxes, bears, weasels—all came to visit, and many exacted tribute. (8.35)
That phrase "exacted tribute" gives us a sense of whom the wilderness really belongs to—and it's not Paulsen. It's the animals' world; he's just living in it.
Quote #10
Even then we were hesitant to go to the next phase—destroying the bear. By law, we were allowed to if they destroyed property or threatened us, but I had a rule that if they didn't actually attack one of our sled dogs—frequently they ate with the dogs and didn't bother them—or a person I would not shoot them. (8.36)
Paulsen's respect for the wild runs so deep that he's hesitant to defend himself against dangerous predators. It doesn't always work out—later in this chapter, a bear attacks his wife.