The Writer’s Almanac has a great essay on Jack London, born in San Francisco on this date in 1876. You really should go read it all, but here is the final paragraph:
When he returned to California, he finally had some stories to write. His first big success was his novel The Call of the Wild (1903), about a dog named Buck who goes from living as a domestic pet to living on its own in the wilderness of Alaska. His most famous short story is “To Build a Fire” (1908), about a man struggling and failing to light a single fire in the snowy wilderness. It is one of the most widely anthologized and translated stories ever written by an American author.
We studied To Build a Fire in high school, which is when I fell in love with Jack London. My mother gave me a collection my senior year, which is still one of my most treasured possessions.
“to build a fire” shocked me almost into an understanding of mortality and –even in a resolutely toughened cuss– how fragile is the line between the land of the living and the moment it all draws to a close for each of us.