the call of the wild. jack london. some quotes.

i'm trying to save parts of the books i read because otherwise they quickly become distant memories of something i might have read. plus, i rarely talk about books with people... so it's hard to take away anything if i don't write it down.

"With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. [...] It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery."

London's views on evolution and instinct are interesting. So invested and convinced of these exact theories, that there is no other side. He writes about them in an elementary sense, giving the reader concise and non-reputable examples. Not to say I disagree with him, it's just weird to me that anything should seem definite & unquestionable. Guess that's the point, animals don't question.

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."

beautiful, complete. London starts this paragraph referencing the call that lures men from cities to the woods, these two impulses chase each other like he says (the need to feel life and then feeling it in absence of all else).

"... the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. [...] Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells;"

I like the imagery & how tangible London makes the wilderness in descriptions of moss & earth. Yup, it draws me back to camping & mts.