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this point in compiling the List a kind of stubbornness had come into Brian’s thinking. He had lived before with much less—just having a modern bow and good arrows and real fishing gear was like being rich—and part of him wanted to just go with that. Maybe throw in a pot for cooking and of course some clothes. But he had not been completely idle in the two and a half years since he’d been “lost in the wilderness,” as some put it. He had been reading, expanding his knowledge, and most of the reading he’d done had been not about modern survival gurus or people who used high-tech gear to go off for a week or a month and then write a book or do a documentary about it and get rich. He had instead studied the true winners, the people in history who had survived in the wild because they had no other choice—the primitive Native Americans of the past, as well as Inuit, Cree and even the peoples of the U.S. Southwest, though the terrain in that region was radically different from these north woods. For them it wasn’t a game but their lives; what Brian knew now as primitive living had in fact been modern for them. It was how they lived—or died. He read and reread and in the end decided that if those people had had modern conveniences available they would have used them—just as they did when new things came along. Very few Native Americans still chipped stone arrowheads to use for hunting, though he suspected some of them still hunted with a bow.
    Brian decided he would still draw a line. If he went crazy and took everything available—guns, water makers, special clothing or gear—he would lose what he had found, the beauty, the connection with the wild that had come into him.
    So he added carefully to the List:
BOOKS , Compact 2-volume set of the complete works of Shakespeare. Definitive guide, with pictures, of edible plants, nuts and berries of the north woods.
    He had come to love reading as much as he disliked television and he’d chewed on which books to take—they were heavy and could not stand much rough use—and decided to ask Caleb, who in turn had asked him, “Who is the greatest writer of all?” Brian had been stumped until Caleb told him.
    “Shakespeare.”
    “I’ve never been able to read him.”
    “Well then, now is a good time to start,” Caleb said. “And when you do, read aloud.”
    “Even alone?”
    “It’s easier to understand. They’re plays, meant to be read aloud. Just try it.”
    He had learned a lot on his own in his time in the woods—sometimes with disastrous results—and he brought the field guide because he wanted to have a wider knowledge of what he could safely eat. Shakespeare for the soul, the guide for the stomach.
3 mechanical pencils with extra lead. 4 small books with blank lined pages.
    He didn’t usually keep a journal, and he didn’t want to lock himself into it now. But he had become very close to Caleb, in some ways closer than he was to his parents, and he thought he could keep a running letter to Caleb and instead of trying to send him pages in envelopes, he could send the book all at once when he found a way to get it out.
CAMPING GEAR AND SUPPLIES , 1 good compass.
    He thought of taking a Global Positioning System which relies on satellite signals, but had a distrust of complicated systems and decided against it. One drop of water in the wrong place or a fall or dropping it on the rocks and it was useless. Besides, he would have a good map from the pilot and every lake was a landmark.
2 decent-quality backpacks with external frames. 1 small camp shovel.
    Here the concept of world politics helped him. The Soviet Union had come apart and one of the things its crumbling military complex had was surplus titanium. Some enterprising Russian had come up with the idea of making titanium—superlight and superstrong—camping shovels and Brian bought one through a catalog.
1 small but good-quality 2-man tent, the kind that becomes a dome with a screen