Call of the Wild

Did you ever read it?
Silly question - who reads any more? If it isn't a movie or an audiobook, no one knows it.

It was always one of my favorites. Man against the elements, Man against himself, Man against Man - all of the classic elements in a 'dog' story. The movie didn't do the struggles, external and internal, proper justice - but then they never do.

"Buck" crossed my mind yesterday as I watched my beloved Sasha cavorting in the blizzard. Sasha would have been one of those high-bred, soon-to-die kidnapped dogs, forced to pull a sled until she dropped. Buck would have disliked her immensely - spoiled and fussy, even though her breed was bred for mountains and snow and cold, to take down antelope with a snarling leap like a cougar. She might think she could do it now, but... she likes her sleeping bag and her warm spots far too much. Work? Not my blonde beauty - she would be insulted by the very thought of it. Brush her and snuggle her and call her beautiful, and she laughs delightedly. She can bark, and when she does, it is a deep chesty powerful roar - but it is merely noise. Long gone are the painful, poignant memories of being kept in an 8x10 cage, bred for puppies, starved and broken-tailed and covered in mange.

When I got the email from an old and dear friend about how the black woman told my friend's husband that Barack Obama was going to pay her mortgage and give her free vouchers for gas - and she knew it was true because their preachers had been telling them in the churches for three months - I thought of Buck again.

Spoiled people who have never known hunger, true hardship, true poverty. Spoiled people who have never gone a day without food, or a month without meat, or night after long winter night without heat.

I was on a forum today, reading about a woman whose husband is being transferred, and she wanted to know of a place where: She could buy a house no more than five years old, preferably in a planned community; the schools were excellent; the playgrounds immense and planned activities for her three elementary-age children omnipresent; where malls and boutiques and coffee shops were all close by. I thought of Buck again, shivering in his dug-in hole in the snow in the Alaska wilderness, fighting over gristly meat tossed out to a pack of slavering, starving dogs that had been driven and beaten to put forth their efforts.

No, the three great struggles that forge the human (and canine) spirit are no more. Man against the elements? We whine that someone should house us and pay for our fuel to heat our homes and drive our vehicles. We complain about rain and snow and sunshine, darting from our warm or air-conditioned house to our warm or air-conditioned car to our warm or air-conditioned work, never getting out and challenging the elements, growing our own food or heating our own home by the sweat of our brows. Man against Man? No, everyone has to win a prize, or it isn't FAIR. Competition means a level playing field and fair play and smooth sailing, not overcoming the bumps and swamps and pathos of our lives. If someone gets a little less than they have been told that they deserve - whether from fate, or from a lack of direction and purpose, or from sheer laziness and self-indulgence - why, give them what they want anyway. They DESERVE it.

Man against himself? What does that mean? Why would you want to compete against yourself, why should you feel that you should prove yourself at all? So much easier to strut around and bark loudly and proclaim to the world that you own it, without ever having done anything to gain it or earn it. Turn on American Idol, or Survivor, or politics, and watch someone else pretend to overcome something, from the comfort of our living room recliner, and cheer or cry crocodile tears for emotions we cannot feel and never know. Emotions that we have not earned. For how can you know pleasure without pain, love without hate, fulfillment without despair, passion without ennui? Simply, you cannot. You can argue that you do, even think that you do. But it is false, tissue-paper emotion, ripped swiftly by our tears and cheers, meaning nothing, holding nothing, accomplishing nothing.

Yes, Buck knew what was important.

Survival. Mutual work output for mutual goal accomplishment. Deep trust, deep loyalty, honesty, and deathless love. Fulfillment of the body, use of the muscles and brain to accomplish, succeed, survive, and to do it better than you ever thought possible of yourself; and fulfillment of the soul, the passionate and raw emotions, tempered with common sense and matured with an ever-growing understanding.

Look around you. See that anywhere? Or are you like my Sasha, knowing and believing that the food bowl and belly will always be full, that she will always be petted and snuggled and spoiled and made much of, without ever having to lift a paw?