Brian's Winter: Chapter 9–Epilogue

by Gary Paulsen
This sequel to Hatchet and The River imagines that 13-year-old Brian Robeson wasn't rescued the summer after he survived a plane crash and had to survive the winter in the Canadian wilderness on his own.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–3, Chapters 4–8, Chapter 9–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. mutation
    an organism with characteristics from chromosomal alteration
    Brian had seen several rabbits with similar white spots and had thought they were some kind of fluke or mutation but he guessed now that they actually changed color in the winter and became white so that they wouldn’t be so visible.
  2. cloven
    (used of hooves) split, divided
    But when he leaned down to study the tracks he saw they had a cloven hoof, like those left by deer but larger.
  3. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    He had one fleeting image of a wall of brown hair with the feathers of the arrow sticking out of the middle and he went down.
  4. animosity
    a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility
    He wondered for a moment if she was the same moose that had attacked him earlier in the summer and tried to feel that she was, tried to feel some animosity toward her.
  5. elated
    exultantly proud and joyful; in high spirits
    But the truth was that killing her made him sad — elated and sad all at once, as he had been with the wolf-killed doe.
  6. intermittently
    in a manner of stopping and starting at irregular intervals
    So Brian put a little more wood on the fire and blew on the coals to get it going and sat all night, dozing intermittently, waiting for daylight so that he could look for tracks.
  7. containment
    the act of keeping something from spreading
    It simply stayed there, locked in the center while the outside held it in and the containment forced the center to build up pressure, and more pressure and still more, until it couldn’t be contained and blew out the side of the tree.
  8. limber
    capable of moving or bending freely
    They were frozen solid but they thawed quickly by the fire and were as limber as they had been in the summer.
  9. warp
    bend or twist out of shape
    Almost impossible, but his mind stayed on it, thinking on how he would cut a straight log and split it with the hatchet and carve it flat and somehow warp up the end, seeing it in his mind, visualizing each step, and he was so caught up in the idea of the skis that he almost missed it.
  10. scrupulously
    with careful attention and effort to do something correctly
    The Smallhorn family were scrupulously polite and because they had lived in the bush and didn’t have television, they knew nothing of Brian’s disaster.
Created on Tue May 12 11:10:44 EDT 2020 (updated Mon Jul 28 17:38:47 EDT 2025)

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