30 SMITHSONIAN.COM | November 2019
HROUGH THE WINDOW of a small plane, I
look out over the vastness of the Yukon Ter-
ritory—an area bigger than California with
only 33,000 residents. It’s an austere land-
scape of glaciated mountain ranges, frozen
lakes, ice fi elds and spruce forests. Then the
mountains are behind us, and there are low
hills and tundra to the horizons, and a big
frozen river starting to melt.
It was this stark wilderness that 100,000
prospectors tried to cross on foot, and in
homemade boats, during the Klondike gold
rush of the 1890s. The “stampeders,” as
they were known, were desperate to reach
the gold fi elds around Dawson City, but the
journey took more than two months, and
was so punishing and dangerous that only
30,000 made it through. In the fi rst wave
was a tough, stocky 21-year-old from San
Francisco named Jack London.
Questing for gold, what he found instead
was inspiration and material for one of the
most successful literary careers of all time.
His best-known Yukon book, The Call of the
Wild, has been translated into nearly 100
languages, and will be released in February as a movie star-
ring Harrison Ford as a Klondike gold prospector. Such is the
enduring power of the story—a dog named Buck is kidnapped
from California and thrust into the frozen wilds of the Far
North—that this is the ninth time that the 1903 novel has been
adapted for fi lm or television.
Techniques including computer-generated imagery en-
abled the latest fi lmmakers to shoot the entire production
without leaving California, and it’s hard to criticize them for
not using authentic Yukon locations. In summertime, the ad-
vantages of 20-hour daylight are off set by horrendous swarms
of mosquitoes, among other challenges. In mid-winter, when
It was a hard day’s run, up the Canyon,
through Sheep Camp, past the Scales
and the timber line, across glaciers and
snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and
over the great Chilkoot Divide, which
stands between the salt water and
the fresh and guards forbiddingly
the sad and lonely North.T
The Call of the Wild