“Out on the trail, nature equalizes the work to a
great extent, and no man can shirk unduly, but in camp, inside the cramped confines
of a tent pitched on boughs laid over the snow, it is very different. There one
must busy himself while the other rests and keeps his legs out of the way if
possible. One man sits on the bedding at the rear of the shelter, and shivers,
while the other squats over a tantalizing fire of green wood, blistering his
face and parboiling his limbs inside his sweaty clothing. Dishes must be
passed, food divided, and it is poor food, poorly prepared at best. Sometimes
men criticize and voice longing for better grub and better cooking. Remarks of this
kind have been known to result in tragedies, bitter words and flaming
curses---then, perhaps, wild actions, memories of which the later years can
never erase. It is but one prank of the wilderness, one grim manifestation of
its silent forces.”
Passages with such verité resonance can only be written
from experience. The author, Rex Beach, had that. Beach joined the Klondike
Gold Rush at the turn of the last century and took his chances with pick and spade,
but it turns out his fortune was to be found in the tales of what he saw while
there.
Beach was no mere Jack London knock-off, although he
is accused of that. Some of his tales do descend into melodrama, but there is
always a tincture of hard-earned verisimilitude that mere legwork or “good research”
cannot replicate.
His plots may veer to melodrama, but his protagonists
exist in a real world of hard-effort, sometimes drudgery, and living on the
knife-edge of existence.
In his autobiography, Personal Experiences
[1940] he refers to the writer’s responsibility that “however fertile may be
his inevitable genius, it seems to me that he owes it to his readers to respect
the realties of his environment and, if he proposes to make use of facts, he should
see that they are accurate. All of which is perhaps another way of saying that
I’m a sort of longhand cameraman.”
Such clear-eyed pragmatism strikes me as useful [and
appealing] in fiction, but far more useful in actual life. How many plans,
dreams, resolutions, goals are composed of one one-part reality and two-parts
assumption of “wishes”?
The “lived-in” “been there, done that” approach of
this story seems to be a microcosm of Sebastian Junger’s excellent non-fiction
work, Tribe, which details how very often it is the hardship
shared that creates the strongest bonds and forges individual character more
than any creed, sermon, or copiously consumed “wise” pages of philosophy.
One more extract from the story. On its face it is
about a rare commodity in the Yukon—women. But the final five words can be
applied to all desires.
Beach argues that living starkly can remind one of
what you didn’t do when you “didn’t know you had it so good.”
“Now it is a penalty of the Whie Country [The
Yukon] that men shall think of women. The open life brings health and vigor, strength
and animal vitality, and these clamor for play. The cold of the still, clear
days is no more biting than the fierce memories and appetites which charge
through the brain at night. Passions intensify with imprisonment; recollections
come to life; longings grow vivid and wild. Thoughts change to realities, the
past creeps close, and dream figures are filled with blood and fire. One remembers
pleasures and caresses, women’s smiles, women’s kisses, the invitation of outstretched
arms. Wasted opportunities mock at one.”
If we are wise, we are spurred by all longhand
cameramen and seize dreams now, reward kindness now, embrace outstretched arms
now.
If we are even wiser, we will seek the occasional
rough-hewn, razor-lived hardship that will bring all we take for granted into stark
counterpoint and return from that experience with grateful eyes and appreciative
hearts.
