Brushpile One was Brian’s raft.  He built it out of whatever sticks and pieces of wood he could salvage.  It looked so bad that he named it “brushpile” because it seemed just thrown together.  Yet the raft is a feat of ingenuity.

Brian built the raft mostly out of wood that had been broken off trees by the storm.  He salvaged wood from the beach.  He dragged them to his work area and “fitted them together” (p. 165) until they made a passable raft.

It took most of the day.  The limbs were cluttered and stuck any which way and he would have to cut one to make another fit, then cut one from another log to come back to the first one, then still another from a third log would have to be pulled in. (p. 165)

Brian is doing well until he realizes that he has no rope!  He thinks of using his shoelaces, but they are looking ragged.  So he decides to rip up pieces of his windbreaker and tie them together to make the raft hold.

For a summary of the book, read here: http://www.enotes.com/hatchet/chapter-17-summary

Citation: Paulsen, Gary. Hatchet. New York: Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2007. Print.