While by no means an essential component of backpacking, I’ve found collections of short stories by various authors ending up in my pack more often than not. When tentbound in a thunderstorm, whiling away an afternoon beside an alpine lake, or passing the time on a long winter’s night, I’ve never regretted bringing along a book despite the extra weight. Perhaps no book has brought me as much entertainment, and been so perfect for backpacking, as To Build a Fire and Other Stories by Jack London. London’s landscape descriptions, attention to detail, and well-crafted narratives allow for more to be delivered in a dozen or two pages than one would think possible.

To Build a Fire and Other Stories seems to be a perfect fit for backpacking and outdoor enthusiasts.

To Build a Fire and Other Stories

An epic tale condensed into a bite-sized package, To Build a Fire is a story of hubris and hypothermia set in the Klondike a lifetime before Gore-Tex was invented. For those who spend a lot of time outdoors and push the limits of distance and weather, it can serve as an all-too-real cautionary tale. The descriptions of the harsh conditions (“He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled in the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.”) and the intimate depiction of life-and-death struggle due to a simple misstep and oversight results in a tale equally thrilling and tragic. I’ve enjoyed this story from hammocks in Kentucky and hot springs in Idaho and the transcendental power of the narrative never fades.

The other Klondike stories in this collection are also of high-caliber, with “Love of Life”, “An Odyssey of the North”, and “In a Far Country” being other standouts. I chuckled out loud my first time reading “In a Far Country” when London’s descriptions of the duties of the mining expedition “. . . a search to be made through the outfit for some suddenly indispensable article” reminded me of the “Where’s my . . .[headlamp, Clif bar, spare pair of socks, first-aid kit, etc.]?” game that myself and my backpacking partners inevitably find ourselves playing. The Klondike stories are enchanting and captivating, with a timelessness that I find is best appreciated when read without distraction in a natural landscape.

London’s knack for painting a picture with words of a landscape is impeccable, and the story “All Gold Canyon” is a prime example of his skill. The paragraphs which describe not just the scenery but the essence of a remote canyon in the Sierra Nevada are wonderfully vivid, and the tension and climax of the story is equally excellent. I read this story while camped at a dilapidated mining cabin in the Welcome Creek Wilderness of Montana and I could almost hear the clanging of a pick-axe and feel the energy of a bygone era come back to life as I read the story.

In Conclusion

Although I’ve found the stories set in wilderness areas to be the most enjoyable, the observations about humanity – both on the macro and micro levels – that are present in stories such as “War”, “South of the Slot”, and “Koolau the Leper” are profound and almost deceptively easy to read. Many of London’s stories are of the type where you can spend nearly as much time pondering the tale and its meaning as you did actually reading it. Page for page, these stories deliver in a way that few other entertainment resources are capable of duplicating.

You can find To Build a Fire and Other Stories here at Amazon.com.

Editor's Note: This book review originally appeared in Issue 27 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can find the original article here.