Call of the Wild

I can feel my primitive instincts yearning to return to the Wild, to go back to Yosemite Park or somewhere similar and stand with no human being for miles in any direction, and howl at the moon or something. I watched 127 Hours the other day, a great film that brought back some vivid memories of my own struggle to survive the wilderness. Luckily, I didn't have to cut my arm off to get out of there; if I had to I would have given it a go, but I'm not sure I would have managed it. I don't think I'm quite skilled enough for that, plus I didn't have a knife so I would have had to use my teeth. The images in the film, the utter barren beauty of the area that the main character explores, made me ache to be out in nothingness again.

Just before I went travelling I read Jack London's Call of the Wild, and it was only last week that I got around to picking the book back up and reading the second story (novella?), White Fang. White Fang is the tale of a wolf born into the wild, but who subsequently becomes owned and domesticated by a succession of humans. London displays the wolf's instincts and feelings phenomenally well, and shows how linked to our primitive inate desires we are. But for me, the main thing that leaps out from the page is the beauty and wonderful loneliness of old America, and old everywhere in turn. This magical place where you can have a second to yourself, where you can turn around and not be confronted with hoardes of people storming past you in every direction. I was in London this weekend (the place not the writer) and the sludge of people was overwhelming when I first arrived, the ache to return to my wild lupine roots stronger than ever: to be back dashing through the mountains, gnashing my teeth as I chase weasels across the land, not a person in sight. To roll in the snow and leap over brooks; to huddle in a cave against the harsh chill of winter; to stalk my prey for miles and then leap into their throats and feel their blood coarsing over me; to make sweet, passionate love with shaggy-haired bitches in the twinkle of sweeping moonlight. I need to leave the city...