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On a sunny afternoon in early February, when the outside temperature was six degrees Fahrenheit, David C. Fischer and Celeste Teale, in the warmth of their RAV4, wandered along country roads east and south of Fjord, Wisconsin, admiring ice-encrusted trees and glistening fields of shallow, almost driftless snow. Fischer and Teale entered the wildlife preserve at Mud Lake and drove down the mile of its one-lane road without encountering any animal, person, or vehicle. At the end of the road, where, in other seasons, canoes and jon boats are launched into a marshy waterway several hundred yards from the open waters of the lake, Fischer stopped the car, got out, and stepped into a reedy tangle of cattails. Evidently only one person had already gone forth from that point that day; a single set of boot prints went out from the shore and returned again. Fischer followed that path into the marsh.
The snow beneath Fischer’s feet, about an inch of crust on the surface of the lake, was brittle, sparkly, squeaky. A brisk breeze burned Fischer’s eyelids and cheeks, the little that was exposed between his thick stocking cap and his twice-turned, blue wool scarf. The wind caused cattails to dance maniacally. Fischer heard the sharp cry of a bluejay and brief honks of distant geese but noticed no other sounds. Other than the indentations left by cleated boots, he saw only rabbit tracks on the snow.
When Fischer had hiked about a hundred yards, perhaps not even so far, to where the earlier hiker had turned around, Fischer, too, turned back and followed the same path to return to his waiting wife and the comfort of their idling automobile.
This mild adventure of an ambling drive and a few moments in bitter cold put Fischer in mind of a certain Jack London story that he had read long ago and had thought of from time to time in all the decades since. He asked Celeste if she had read it, too; she said she didn’t recognize it by its name. Fischer resolved to find the story when they got back home, and he intends, if his wife consents, to read it aloud to her, some evening before these winter snows trickle into spring.
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