In Chapter 1 of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, the narrator explains that Brian is flying from New York to Canada to spend the summer with his father, who is working in Canada's oil fields, having just "designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling." Attached to the back of the plane is drilling equipment, right "next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack." The pack is full of supplies should there be an emergency landing.
Later, after the plane does indeed crash in a lake, two months after being stranded in the wilderness, Brian remembers the survival pack in the plane and decides to go and get it. However, making it out to the plane, finding the pack, freeing it from the plane, and getting it back to shore prove to be extremely difficult tasks. After nearly drowning twice, once while retrieving his dropped hatchet and once due to a fright, he finally has the pack in his possession and makes it back to shore, dropping in exhaustion once on solid ground. The pack contains "unbelievable riches," including a sleeping bag he could use as a roof to his shelter, a "foam sleeping pad," cooking pots and pans, silverware, food packets, matches and lighters secured in a waterproof container, a "sheath knife with a compass in the handle," a first-aid kit, a fishing kit, an emergency transmitter, two bars of soap, and even a rifle (Ch. 19). Little does he know that finding and activating the emergency transmitter would lead to his being found and rescued that same day.
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