Tale L: The Call of the Wild North of Fifty-three
You men who live in cities—who toil, day in and day out, in the thick of noisy, teeming multitudes, under artificial lights, under roofs, behind glass, in offices and factories far away from the sun and the air, the light and the wind—don’t you feel at times something tugging at your heart-strings?
Don’t you feel a great longing for something new, something clean, something different from what you have been accustomed to? Don’t you hear, now and then, a whispering coming from nowhere in particular and calling you? Calling and calling in the middle of the night when you lie awake; in the flush of dawn when you catch a gleam of the sky from your open window; in the evening when your work is done and when you find yourself going home? Do you know what I mean? Have you felt it?
It is the “Call of the Wild”, the oldest call of all—the call coming to you through generations and generations who have ignored it.
Some people may laugh; others may wonder. But the man who has answered that call will never forget it. He may return to civilization. He may cling to the memory of the discomforts and hardships only. He may endeavor not to wipe out of his mind the haunting feeling of solitude and loneliness which gripped him at times in the bleak wilderness through which he roamed. But sooner or later, the longing to go back there will come to him again and, if he cannot do so, he will always regret it.
Utter freedom! A camp pitched here, a meal cooked there. The sun rising while the crimson of sunset is still glowing in the West. The dull roar of the rapid in the distance. The sharp howl of the hunting wolf. The shimmer of the birch leaves. The hammering of the woodpecker. The splash of the fish rising to the surface of the lake. The plaintive call of the reed-warbler. The murmuring of the jack-pines. The Northern lights dancing silently in the sky. Peace and utter freedom!
