Just ahead of Part Eleven of our nightly audio adventure, a reminder that the audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week can be heard on Serenade Radio in the UK Thursday at 9pm London time - that's 4pm North American Eastern.
The listening is anything but easy when Jack London is prowling the Klondike. Mark Steyn Club member Paul Cathey writes from Colorado:
In the photo attached to this segment, the prairie dog peeping through the snow would have provided at least three to four times the protein mass of the tree squirrels, but its fleas would probably have infected the men with bubonic plague, just to cap off their adventure. Jack London is the master of the sober reminder that Nature is utterly indifferent to our welfare. This tale is a superb choice, and beautifully read, as usual, Mark.
Very kind of you, Paul. In tonight's episode of Burning Daylight, our protagonist is enjoying heartier fare:
The weeks came and went, but Daylight never encountered the other man. However, he found moose plentiful, and he and his dogs prospered on the meat diet. He found "pay" that was no more than "wages" on a dozen surface bars, and from the generous spread of flour gold in the muck and gravel of a score of creeks, he was more confident than ever that coarse gold in quantity was waiting to be unearthed. Often he turned his eyes to the northward ridge of hills, and pondered if the gold came from them. In the end, he ascended Dominion Creek to its head, crossed the divide, and came down on the tributary to the Klondike that was later to be called Hunker Creek.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eleven of Burning Daylight simply by clicking here and logging-in.
If you know your Yukon creeks, you'll be aware the above are all real places. The picture at top right is of three children working a gold-mine rocker on Dominion Creek circa 1898 - ie, a couple of years after Daylight was staking out the neighborhood. The braided girl with the fixed gaze at left prompted a brief Internet frenzy about whether Saint Greta of Thunberg was a time-traveler come to save us from ourselves.
If such viral derangement makes you despair, there's nothing healthier than taking a short break from the hell of the hamster-wheel news-cycle and exploring the delights of our Tales for Our Time home page. It's configured in Netflix tile style, with the stories organized by category - thrillers, fantasy, romance, etc - which we hope will make it easy for you to find a favorite diversion of an evening.You can access four dozen of our cracking capers here - and all previous episodes of our current adventure here.
If you've yet to hear any of our Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining The Mark Steyn Club and enjoy our nightly audio adventures every evening twenty minutes before lowering your lamp - or hoard the episodes and binge-listen at the weekend or on a long car journey, if your government currently permits you to take one. For more details on that and other benefits to Steyn Club membership, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Please join me right here tomorrow evening for another episode of Burning Daylight.
