Winter Camping 101

I first read To Build a Fire by Jack London years ago. It actually made more sense this time around as I now have a better understanding of the setting of the story. London uses the Klondike gold rush in Alaska as the setting for "To Build a Fire" as well as the books, "White Fang" and "Call of the Wild". These are the three works he is known for today.
A lot of dogs die in these books. A lot of people die too but as a child I was more concerned about the dogs. I think London was actually more concerned about the dogs too as many of them fare better than the people do. Many of the characters in London's writing are totally out of their element, can't adjust and die because of it. People freeze to death. People get eaten by wolves. People drown. People get frostbite. People get beaten up and shot and starve. Just about all of that also happens to the dogs except the frostbite part.
London wrote about Alaska around 1900, so there were no snowmobiles, helicopters or down parkas. There were a lot of greedy desperate totally unprepared people looking for gold in a wilderness with out technology to help them out if they got in trouble. They invariably got in to trouble in the cold. It was cold, very, very, very, cold. London wrote about cold extraordinarily well.

Submitted by Martha Oldham