That the wild emanates an incessant beckoning call is no secret. Jack London’s masterpiece, The Call Of The Wild, is named after it. London describes the magnetic pull of the wild, “deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.” What’s more, London’s protagonist in this short novel is not a man, as we might assume, but a wild dog. The call of the wild is felt by human and dog alike, and by the primordial wolf within everyone.
But the modern conception of the wilderness is a paradox for us. Whilst it’s a place of undeniable, pure freedom, a place that we are naturally called to, it’s commonly defined as a land free from the exploits of humanity. It follows that, in a sense, we are always visitors in the wild. Of course, we can travel into the depths of the wilderness, even live in it, but the extent to which the wilderness continues—because it, like everything, can be extinguished—is the extent to which humanity, we, understand our role within it. Experiencing a place that is by definition fundamentally seperate from us, allows for a penetrating lesson in what it is, conversely, to be human. Being in the wilderness prompts the willing towards an exploration of what it means to be a human in this world.
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