|  A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
— Rachel Carson Survival under adverse conditions, far from the constraints of civilization, is an attractive theme for novels; in fact, it was the theme of Robinson Crusoe, arguably the first English novel ever written. How will people behave when there are no social rules to keep them under control? Is it possible to be truly human in isolation from society? Does society keep us estranged from our true and primal humanity? Or are social rules all that keep us from being animals? What is the relationship between culture and nature? In Shakespeare’s comedies, characters are transformed because they suddenly find themselves outside the city or the court that defines their roles and identities. Men and women dress in the clothes of the other sex, and talk with spirits and nymphs; miracles occur, problems are solved, and couples wed. In poet James Dickey’s novels, the wilderness is both beautiful and liberating, and liberated humans become predators on humans. These perennial questions are put into stark perspective in a survival situation, and it is not surprising that novelists have provided widely differing answers.
 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-19283-382-0. First published in 1719 under the title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Carusoe, of York Mariner, this book is considered the first important English novel, and the fascination of its story – perhaps, even better, of its myth – remains undiminished. Based on a true story, the novel tells of how Crusoe, fleeing from pirates, is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe, and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone – a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, and build a canoe; who wrestles with his fate and ponders the nature of God and man; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, suddenly discovers the footprint of another human in the sand.
 James Dickey, Deliverance (New York NY: Dell Publishing, 1994), ISBN 0-38531-387-X. The great American poet James Dickey has written a novel about a primitive and violent test of manhood. The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state’s most remote whitewater river is about to be destroyed by a dam project. Four city slickers on a canoe trip discover freedom and exhilaration in the stark beauty of the river. But beyond the city is a cruel and demanding nature, symbolized by two rifle-wielding mountain men, who rape one of the travelers and almost rape another. And the adventure turns into a struggle for survival, far from civilization, where both predator and prey are human.
 James Dickey, To the White Sea (New York NY: Dell Publishing, 1994), ISBN 0-38531-309-8. Another remarkable novel from poet James Dickey follows an Air Force gunner shot down over Tokyo shortly before the great fire raid in the last months of World War II. His position should be hopeless, but he comes from a remote region of Alaska, where he grew up hunting, trapping, and studying game. His object is to find similarly cold country, and he lurks and dodges his way north to Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival and freedom. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan, he makes his way across enemy terrain, alert to both danger and opportunity, using every trick that he has learned from hare and wolverine. With every step and every breath his journey transforms into the flight of a pure predator, remorseless and brutal, immersed in the incredible beauty of the fierce winter landscape.
 William Golding, Lord of the Flies (New York NY: Berkley Publishing, 1959), ISBN 0-39950-148-7. First published in 1954, Golding’s parable shows little doubt about what happens to humans – or at least English schoolboys – in the absence of societal constraints: they turn into animals. A group of English school boys are left stranded on an unpopulated island. At first, they cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires; but many would rather swim, play, hunt wild pigs, paint themselves, abandon the trappings of civilization, and, eventually, hunt down and kill those who would keep a decent order. This deeply symbolic and extremely well written book stakes out a strong position in the culture-nature debate.
 Wayne Johnson, The Devil You Know (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2004), ISBN 1-4000-8227-7. It looks a lot like Deliverance, but the setting is now northern Minnesota, the main character is a teenager, and the male relationship is between a father and son instead of two friends. Fifteen-year-old David Geist, troubled high-school student and crosscountry runner, is on a canoe trip with his younger sister Janie and his estranged father Max, a recovering alcoholic who sees the trip as a chance to rebuild his relationship with his children. But the Boundary Waters hide monsters – not only Max’s own violent temper, but also three thuggish criminals on the run, who savagely attack Max and rape Janie. David arrives in time to kill one of them with a hunting knife, and their leader, a shrewd and resentful man named Penry, vows revenge. Thus David and Penry match wills, wits, and survival skills in a life-or-death race back to civilization. David is an old hand on this terrain, and he knows his wilderness survival skills – for example, how to patch a damaged canoe with bark and pine pitch. But Penry is a savage pit bull of a man with his own wilderness skills. It is no surprise that the journey to safety becomes a test of limits and a passage into manhood; what is striking about the book is how it transcends its plot to become driven less by the skills than by the character of both Penry and David.
 Louis L’Amour, Last of the Breed (New York NY: Bantam Books, 1987), ISBN 0-55328-042-2. Whatever may be his sins of style, L’Amour is a great storyteller. Here his hero is Major Joe Makatozi, a part Sioux, part Cheyenne Air Force pilot, and a man born out of time. His experimental aircraft is forced down over the Soviet Union, and he is imprisoned in a desolate region roughly equidistant from Moscow and the western tip of Alaska. When he escapes, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness. Only one route lies open to Mack: the path of his ancestors, overland to the Bering Strait and across the sea to America. But in pursuit is a legendary tracker, the Yakut native Alekhin, who knows every square foot of the icy frontier. Sure, it’s hokey, and Joe Mack is too good to be true, but it is minutely observed, excitingly plotted, and hard to put down.
 Jack London, Novels and Stories (New York NY: Library of America, 1982), ISBN 0-940-45005-4. Jack London was a drunk, an impoverished laborer, a renegade adventurer, a war correspondent, and a socialist when it was dangerous in this country to be a socialist; he could write gripping and authentic stories of human survival under the harshest conditions. The Library of America – an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in authoritative texts – has here collected some of his best outdoor writing – the novels The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Sea Wolf; the short stories To Build a Fire, The White Silence, Love of Life, and many more. Given London’s remarkable output, no anthology will be perfect; this one leaves out Lost Face, probably one the the best short stories ever written.
 Ben Mikaelsen, Touching Spirit Bear (New York NY: HarperCollins, 2001), ISBN 0-380-97744-3. Teenager Cole Matthews is an arrogant, defiant, smug bully, the child of wealthy, abusive, alcoholic parents, who finally beats a classmate so severely that he faces prison. His probation officer suggests an alternative – Circle Justice, a Native American tradition that attempts to heal the victim, the offender, and the community – which Cole accepts as yet another way he can scam the system. The Circle decides that Cole should be banished for a year to an island off the coast of Alaska. It is this experience in the wilderness, including an almost fatal mauling by a large white "spirit bear," that finally leads Cole to stop blaming others and take responsibility for his life. This is a moving and impressive book for teenage readers, sometimes heavy-handed, but definitely worth taking a look at.
 Gary Paulsen, Hatchet (New York NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996), ISBN 0-68980-882-8. Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his recently divorced father in the Canadian mountains, carrying little with him except a hatchet, a gift from his mother. When the pilot has a heart attack and the single-engine plane crashes, he is the only survivor, and, alone, he must learn how to stay alive in the Canadian wilderness. This book is intended for young teenage readers, but there is a lot of appeal for an old guy like me as well. The book makes clear that Brian's survival for fifty-four days is as much an inward as an outer struggle, as he deals with self-pity and despair and learns the extent of his own courage.
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