Call of the Wild.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 November 1922, Page 1

Call of the Wild.

(fly Horace Annosley Vaehell). The other day. in one of our parks, a man was attacked by a buck. For eleven months in the year park deer, whether red or fallow, arc tame as sheep. In October they become dangerous. They do not have to fight to live, because free pasture is provided. They have to light to love. The fight to live, insistent in all of tis, all ineradicable instinct, is primarily the Call of the Wild. It scuds men to the moors and nioun-i tains, to the forests and streams, to all the innumerable places where one must light to live. It is the- • force 'behind Sport; it makes civilised man endure, and enjoy, hardships; it renews all that is still primitive in him; it toughens relaxed tissues of mind and body. To resist this instinct is unwise. We ought, if possible, to pass on» month tit least out of each year at tile Auberge tic la Belle Ktoile, sleeping on Mother Faith, cooking food we have caught or killed, braving heat and cold, rain ami sun, absorbing at every pore the virtue of the wilderness. I know a famous doctor in San Francisco. blessed (or cursed) with an immense practice. For two months, during each year, up to the close of a long and useful life, he obeyed the Call of the Wild. He fished and trapped and hunted in the primeval woods, living at first hand, lie returned to work a new man, rejuvenated, vigorous, and virile. And what an object lesson.

The many ennnot. tin this. Rut they can achieve some sort of drastic change of life if the will he not atrophied by disuse. Tlicre is no tonic like a walk in a raging storm. “Fugging” indoors paralyses energy. A gipsy cannot sleep in a house. Every caravan T see tells its own joyous talc. Thousands of young men camp out. There is no music like the frizzling of a steak over a wood fire. A glass of beer is nectar after climbing the fells of Cumberland. Warm, dry clothes are a luxury when rain has soaked you to the skin. The Call of the Wild is the trumpetcall of life; and it cannot be disregarded with impunity.