In praise of winter prose and verse ~
A season for the chionophiles among us
Two renowned poets, Robert Frost and Robert Service, were born in the same year – 1874; the former in San Francisco, the latter in England. Frost and Service were keen observers of man, beast and nature; both were talented writers.
Just as the stark tales of Jack London smote me as a teenager, I was also drawn to the verse of Service and Frost.
Perhaps, being one who loves the snow and cold as I do, a dyed-in-the-wool chionophile, it was only a matter of time before I would stumble upon these precious works.
London allows us to experience the bitter cold and death-dealing conditions in Alaska and the Yukon during the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush in his existential short story, To Build a Fire. I urge you to read this story while wrapped in a warm blanket, as it may elicit an acute case of literary-induced hypothermia, perhaps even frostbite.
Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening offers a vivid scene of a man and his horse out for a late-night ride through a snow-laden forest. We feel like we are with him as he stops to take in the beauty and deathly silence that only winter can provide.
And that brings us to my favorite winter piece, The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.
I continue to read the prose of all three writers, but only in the winter months. I wait patiently until an evening when the first significant snow of the year blankets our mountains. I pour myself a glass of the finest bourbon – that suits my wallet –on these special occasions. The mood and atmosphere are now perfect to sample the bitter cold and stark beauty these stories engender. Then, I settle in to read all three of the works previously mentioned, and much more.
Each time we read such stories, we gain a new appreciation for the endurance of the men and women who made their way north to the Yukon in search of wealth and adventure. And while the wealth may not have materialized, the adventures were plentiful.
A visit with an 89-year-old uncle shortly before he died in 1984 brought a then-unknown poem to my attention. Uncle Ed was a man whose 40-year career was reading residential gas meters. Still, he offered up something that evening that caught me off guard completely, especially coming from this normally taciturn man.
Uncle Ed cleared his throat and recited all 15 stanzas of Robert Service’s epic poem about the 1897 gold rush without flaw. His delivery and intonation of this delightful tale would, within a year, send me and an adventuresome friend, Mark Reed, on a hike up the fabled Chilkoot Trail from Skagway to the Yukon.
In this winter season possessing a beauty of its own, I offer you the following poem by Robert Service.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold;
The northern lights have seen queer sights,
but the queerest they ever did see
was the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where
the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the south to roam
round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed
to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that
“he’d sooner live in hell.”
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
over the Dawson Trail.
Talk of your cold! Through the parka’s fold it
stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we closed, then the lashes froze till
sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper
was Sam McGee.
On that very night, as we lay packed tight in
our robes beneath the snow,
All the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead
were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap” says he, “I’ll cash in on this trip, I guess;
And, if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no;
Then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till
I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘tain’t being dead – it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore
I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
but God! He looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and raved all day
of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and
I hurried, horror driven,
with a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid,
because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
“You may tax your brawn and brains, but you promised true, and it’s up to you to
cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,
in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
While the huskies round in a ring,
howled out their woes to the homeless snows
Oh God! How I loathed that thing.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and
a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it
was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I
looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my crematorium.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I
lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I
heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared
– such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and
I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him
sizzle so;
and the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down
my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went
streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled
with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:
“I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked,”
then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the
heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and
he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in
the cold and storm –
Since I left Plumtree down in Tennessee, it’s
the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold;
The northern lights have seen queer sights,
but the queerest they ever did see
was the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Here’s wishing our readers a happy, prosperous, and healthy New Year,
Ken Springer
Ken1949bongo@gmail.com