This is a story about how I learned to live with nature, and what it taught me.
The “Manvotional: Call of the Wild” is a book about a man who goes on an adventure in Alaska. The book was written by author, Brett McKay.
The Call of the Wild is a game that takes place in the wild
Robert W. Service is the author of this article.
Have you ever stood in awe at naked magnificence with nothing else to look at? There are a lot of set pieces and drop-curtain situations. Black valleys where the rapids tear and roar? Big mountains hurled to heaven, which the dazzling sunsets blazon? Have you searched the vastness for anything you’ve misplaced, sweeping the visioned valley with the green stream running through it? Have you managed to mute your soul? Then do it for God’s sake; hear the challenge, absorb the lesson, and pay the price.
Have you ever gone on a walk in the wilderness, across the sagebrush wasteland, or through the bunch-grass meadows where the cattle graze? Have you learnt to sing pieces of ragtime at the end of all creation, and have you mastered the desert’s small ways? Have you camped in the foothills, ridden over the mountains, and traversed the dry sun-lands from beginning to end? Have you made friends with the mesa? Are you familiar with its moods and changes? Then pay attention to the cry of the wild.
Have you ever heard the Great White Silence, not a twig aquiver with snow-gemmed twigs? (Eternal facts that put our comforting falsehoods to shame.) Have you ever gone snowshoeing and damaged a trail? mushed your huskies up the river, took the risk of the unknown, led the way, and took the prize? Have you traced the map’s vacant regions, mixed with the mongrel races, and felt the brute’s terrible might in each thew?
Can you finish it off with obscenities, even how dreadful the worst is? Then listen to the Wild; it’s looking for you. Have you struggled, famished, and triumphed, groveled, yet seized glory, and grown larger in the grand scheme of things? “Done things” merely for the sake of doing them, letting babblers tell the narrative, seeing the bare soul underneath the pleasant veneer? Have you seen God in all of His glory, or heard the text that nature speaks? (It won’t be heard in the family pew.) Listen to the Wild — it’s calling you. The basic things, the honest things, the quiet guys who do things —
They’ve cradled you in tradition, prepped you with their preaching, drenched you in convention from head to toe; they’ve set you on display; you’re a testament to their teaching — But can’t you hear the Wild? It’s calling you. Let us explore the quiet locations, see what fortune awaits us; let us go to a lonely country I know. On the night-wind, there’s a whisper, and a star gleams to lead us. And the Wild is beckoning… let us go.
