Sometimes it would be nice if life just kept happening the way it's happening, if things got to a good place and just stayed there, didn't change. - Gary Paulsen

I couldn’t change the wind but perhaps I could reduce the effect of the wind on the boat.

So this summer, this first summer when he was allowed to have “visitation rights” with his father, with the divorce only one month old, Brian was heading north. His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit. He was working in the oil fields of Canada, up on the tree line where the tundra started and the forests ended. Brian was riding up from New York with some drilling equipment — it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing — that had to be specially made in the city, riding in the bushplane with the pilot named Jim or Jake or something who had turned out to be an all right guy, letting him fly and all.

There is always a solution. For everything. Always. Sometimes it isn't pretty and takes a little longer, but there is still a solution.