The Call of the Klondike

They came from the south in a desperate chase.

With the dream of gold in their eyes.

Through valleys deep and mountains wide,

To the land where the Yukon lies.

The wind it howled, and the frost it bit.

The nights were long and bitterly cold.

Their hunger burned; like a fire untamed,

In their fevered hearts for gold.

Jack London came with the rest of them.

A young man, bold and lean.

With a pack on his back and a dog by his side,

To the land where few had been.

The White Pass Trail was slick with ice.

The Chilkoot steep and cruel.

Yet, step by step, with aching bones,

He followed that endless rule.

Wherever the wild calls, the man must go.

Though, death’s the most common prize.

For in the grasp of the North’s cold hand,

A man’s true worth will rise.

He faced the wrath of the mighty peaks,

And slept beneath the sky.

This land where the wolves would howl, the winds would shriek,

And the stars hung brightly high.

He wandered through rivers, coated in ice,

And battled the midnight storm.

With fingers numb and skin frost-bit,

He learned to love the warm.

Though, the gold was scarce, and the living was hard.

The hunger gnawed his bones.

For the North, she’s cruel to the foolhardy,

And listens not to the groans.

Yet, London survived with tales to be told;

Of sled dogs, wolves, and men.

Of the silent pact that the cold land made

With the lives she took—and then—

She gave him stories fierce and wild,

Like the bite of a winter’s night.

Tales of men who bled for the hope of wealth,

only to vanish out of sight.

He penned the tales of a frigid world,

Where survival was the game.

Through the boomtowns and riverbanks,

He carved out his own name.

He learned the laws of the frozen wild,

Where only the tough survived.

In those lands of ice and snow,

He felt his spirit revived.

The Dawson saloons were warm with fire.

The winter time was death’s domain.

For the North, she takes what the North desires,

And never explains her gain.

Still, Jack pushed through with a heart of steel,

And a pen as sharp as a knife,

He gave the world the savage truth

Of the Klondiker’s courageous life.

So raise a glass to the pursuits of Jack,

And the men who answered that golden call.

The people who dared to trek over mountains and ice,

And rise from the frontier's thrall.

For though the gold was never his,

He claimed a greater prize.

The words that shine like the northern lights;

Beneath the Arctic skies.

To those who braved the Yukon’s wrath,

Let their names forever ring.

They intrepidly walked where wolves still roam,

And lived like northern kings.