Outdoors/Adventure

As temperatures dip, lessons from Jack London's 'To Build a Fire'

As we flew over the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, I stared through the window at the earth below. Floating lichen carpets tore open, revealing winding streams and ponds over duck flats as far as I could see.

In places, abandoned snowmachines rusted to the color of the environment     — circles of gray lit in places to reveal purple hues, lime green and orange. The channeled rivers lined with the darker foliage of stunted willow wound mindlessly and wild to the coast. I wanted to get down to each of those rivers and discover them the way they could only be discovered once. After that, they are never the same.

I was aiming to fish waters long considered infeasible for fly fishermen that channel through a canyon, dropping 18 feet per mile out of the Ahklun Mountains before connecting with the world-class fishing waters of the Goodnews River before flowing another 35 miles to the Bering Sea.

I had not yet experienced the immeasurable dynamics that make one body of water more difficult than another. My expectations of the trip came from the information contained on U.S. Geological Survey maps and Google Earth images, plus the assurances of gear manufacturers, weather predictions and the idealized accounts of guides and backcountry adventurers.

The first rise in the landscape appeared ahead just as the pilot banked to the right and flew through a canyon once before coming back around and landing on the mountain lake. The gravel beach looked perfect for camping, and a spot of sun broke out over the water.

Surprise fear

That night, we sat around a driftwood fire with only the sound of the wind, the water and the fish jumping. Now and then, one of us would go to the lake and cast a few streamers, catch a green lake trout in a raft of blood-red sockeye and return to our seat by the fire content. The surrounding hills were tundra-covered knolls with snow that would never melt before winter.

It was a trip of a lifetime, but my thoughts, upon reflection, were much like those of the man in Jack London's short story, "To Build a Fire." I was ready for a week of adventure but not the surprise fear I felt in those final few hours along the river when overcome by hypothermia.

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[Read "To Build a Fire"]

My trouble was rain and water, rather than extreme cold, but I was so blinded by possibility of great fishing, I was incapable of perceiving the actual risks of my adventure.

This week — with temperatures forecast to sink below minus 40 in the Interior — will be extremely hazardous in the backcountry, especially if one is traveling alone on foot.

The difference between minus-10 cold and minus-75 cold was best described to me when I first moved to a remote village south of McGrath. "Cold is cold," one of the townspeople told me. "The difference between minus 10 and minus 50 or minus 75 is the speed at which you lose your ability to do simple tasks."

The time you have to build a fire determines whether or not to gather ample wood to keep the fire going once it's started or build a proper base to allow for melting snow to drain away. If you are wet or alone in minus-50-degree weather, your fingers may stop working before you can strike a match.

The lessons in "To Build a Fire" come (and are ignored) in order of importance. First, the wolf dog knows that real cold is no time for traveling. Second, an old man had told him that, after 50 below, he should travel with a companion. Third, at 75 below, the man knows he cannot fail in his first attempt to build a fire.

Cautionary tale, true story

Perhaps the best lesson in London's story about a man who dies of hypothermia after breaking through ice comes in the story's first lines: "The trouble with him was that he was not able to imagine." The ability to be prepared for things to go wrong in Alaska is more important than in less remote and warmer places.

[Tips on building a fire in miserable weather]

"To Build a Fire" is a cautionary tale, which brings to mind a similar, but true,  story of survival.

In "Alaska's Wolf Man" by Jim Rearden, Frank Glaser is crossing the Tanana River in freezing cold. He uses a stick to test the overflow ice but throws it away when he appears to be on dry ice. When he falls through the ice, he thinks fast and locates dry tinder to build a fire from dead spruce trees. Using an ax, he piles dry spruce boughs and retrieves dry matches from his pack.

When the fire is blazing, he stands on a small green spruce and strips down to his moccasins, mittens and fur cap. He sprints between the fire and a nearby tree to cut branches to hang his clothes and gather wood. Once his clothes are warm, he dresses and stays by the fire instead of continuing to where he planned to camp. He makes a pot of tea, boils sheep meat and sleeps on a spruce bough bed.

Instead of "hearing his own judgment of death," as London's character did when his fire goes out and his dog abandons him to die, Glaser survives because of his ability not just to build a fire but to imagine the circumstances he found himself in beforehand and know what to do.

No matter how much I want to experience the outdoors — whether to escape civilization or test myself in the wild — the call of the wild has a pitch of unapologetic danger. The stories of those who have gone before remind us it's sometimes worth staying indoors and reading on a cold, cold day.

Christine Cunningham of Soldotna is a lifelong Alaskan and avid hunter. On alternate weeks, she writes about Alaska hunting. Contact Christine at cunningham@yogaforduckhunters.com

Christine Cunningham

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifetime Alaskan and avid hunter. She's the author, with Steve Meyer, of "The Land We Share: A love affair told in hunting stories."

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