THE CALL OF THE WILD

Jack London wrote many a fine story in his time. Few, however, have been as popular as his story of Buck, that wonderful dog in "The Call of the Wild."

I had a wonder dog once too. His name was Sting, named after the legendary sword that so many times saved the life of little Bilbo Baggins in the days of Middle Earth.

Sting was a mixed breed, sired by a St. Bernard and mothered by a mixed Great Dane and German Shepard. He was large: he was quick witted and acutely intelligent.

Sting was for many years my best friend. And he needed land on which to run, and rivers in which to swim. New Hampshire fit him just so.

And then I moved to Boston to attend Law School. I couldn't do that to my Sting. So I left him home in New Hampshire with my mother. (My mother had a large property, with fields and gardens, and she loved animals of all sorts. She was quite pleased to add Sting to her menagerie of four dogs and innumerable squirrels, birds, and chipmunks.)

Sadly, Sting succumbed at an early age, around 6 years old, to the greatest of all thieves, Cancer. I remember the call from Angel Memorial Hospital: "We can keep your dog alive, but he will have to come in twice a week for chemotherapy treatment." I asked if he would still be able to run and swim for hours on end, which was how Sting loved to spend his days. "No," they said. "He will have to be kept in the house without too much activity." I told them to put him to sleep.

I pulled an old favorite book off the shelf tonight, Jack London's "The Call of the Wild." I opened it and noted its commencement with the following:

Into the Primitive

Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom's chains;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain.

I again understand why I had to let go of Sting.

I again understand why some of us, the ones I call the lucky ones, get on motorcycles and head out on roads knowing not where we will end up that night. We chafe at custom's chains.

Like Buck and Sting, we need to howl "beneath a glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above [our] fellows." We long to sing "a song of the younger world, which is the sound of the pack."

The song of the road is a song of the younger world, a world where simplicity and honesty provide all that one needs for guidance.