SAM MCGEE

A picture of the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush -- a backdrop for the poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee

Back in the day I was a fairly tough outdoors guy and, as part of that, I went on a thirty-day backpacking trip through the White Mountains of Maine and New Hampshire. On that trip I had the chance to meet Paul Petzold. He is, undoubtedly, the most influential man in all of American Mountaineering. He was 88 years old when I met him and he had recently climbed the Grand Teton in Wyoming!

At some point on that trip, I was talking to a friend and starting reciting to him the poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee -- one of the most famous wilderness poems. Low-and-behold, as I recited the poem, Paul Petzold comes around the corner and jumps in on the retelling... So there I was, deep in the mountains of New England, trading stanzas of Sam McGee with the great Paul Petzold. You know those few moments in your life when you could easily be playing a part in a movie? ...One of those classic moments that may never happen again? Well, this was one of those moments for me.

That poem has always been part of my world. I told it to kids at camp as we sat around the fire on kayaking trips in the Ozarks, and to other kids as we sat around the fire in Colorado. Once I even told it at a Campus Crusade bonfire -- mostly to impress a hot coed named Lee Ann. But nothing would ever come close to swapping stanzas with Paul Petzold... at least till now.

Tonight, Sam McGee came full circle; I sat in a chair and explained the story to Jennalee. I used to tell it to her every night to get her to sleep (before she could understand the words). But tonight she wanted to really hear it. I hadn't told it to her in years. But there I sat: in the air-conditioning, in the ugliest town in the world, with the mini-van in the garage, a six-man "bubba-tent" in the closet, telling her about the "strange things done under the midnight sun." It is a world away from Joplin, that's for sure. But the slight thought that my little girl hears the beat of that drum is so wonderful, I could never explain it. Because of that, this may have been the most meaningful recitation of them all. Even bigger than Paul Petzold. It was one of my favorite moments.

I will close this mushy blog post with words from a differen poem by Robert Service, but they are the words I had to tell Jennalee after we finished Sam McGee...

They have cradled you in custom,
they have primed you with their preaching
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase
you're a credit to their teaching
But can't you hear the wild? -- it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places,
let us see what luck betides us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the wild is calling, calling... let us go.