06/05/2023
Let me tell you about this man Walden.
At twenty-four he struck out for Alaska. It was the vivid frontier of the day, newly set afire by gold discoveries, and its lure was irresistible. But it was not gold that drew this youth, nor has it ever been.
The challenge was that of adventure, of search for the untried, of pioneering beyond the farthest fringe of the accepted and commonplace into the unknown. It is the same characteristic that led him at the age when most men count inaction a luxury, to participate in an Antarctic expedition and considered it as the most prized privilege of his life.
He reached the country of the Yukon in the early part of 1896, when Circle City was the center, and the Birch Creek mines the magnet. Always an understanding companion of dogs, he was soon hauling freight across the white wilderness with dog-team. This was the Alaska of the days before the Klondike, the frontier of the miners’ meetings and the sourdough, the land of justice and order without laws or statutes, the period of the gambling-hall that was strict and square. Walden saw and took part in it all.
A year later came the Big Rush, sweeping in Like a flood, bringing with it every manner of man and woman under the sun, all crazed with dreams of gold, schoolteacher and sportsman, dry-goods clerk and lumberjack, minister and thug, young bride and woman of the streets. Dawson, a single log cabin, became a city of forty thousand. Skagway, notorious cesspool, received its filth of gunmen who shot their victims in the back. Again Walden, making trips with freight and mail and passengers behind his dogs, saw it in all its detail.
Prospectors, digging in the beach sands of Behring Sea, across Norton Sound from the mouth of the Yukon, found much gold; and Nome rose to its zenith. Walden went down the river, crossed to the beach diggings, and shared life there. With hundreds of others, he passed a winter keenly characterized by the daily problem of finding enough food to keep soul in body.
A few hardy sourdoughs pushed out across the limitless wastes of the Arctic tundra, and Walden was one of them. With a chance acquaintance he built a cabin. The two of them occupied it through a long Arctic winter, their food supplies dried salmon and a small stock of flour that they eked out by mixing with it a third of reindeer moss. For six months they did not speak. ‘Have you ever seen him since?’ He was asked.
‘No! And, by Heaven, I hope I never shall!’
And finally, home.
READ MORE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4HQXZZ8/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3JSYBD1GHGA6O&keywords=dog+puncher+on+the+yukon&qid=1683399150&sprefix=dog+puncher+on+the+yukon%2Caps%2C399&sr=8-3
