Call of the Wild

I confess I have never read Jack London’s classic. How could Buck (a dog) be “called” from sunny Santa Clara to the greed-fed violent frozen emptiness of Alaska?

January had me hoping for a little sun and light winds to explore a few rural roads that caught my attention while glancing over the Galena & Jo Daviess Road Guide. When I “Googled” these roads, I discovered Fitzgerald Lake, which lies just below a long 15% climb up Gamble Hill. And so on Friday, as I drove back from Woodbine along well cleared Brown and Bethel Roads, my hope became a calling to the wilderness.

On Saturday, winds wheezed, and the predicted sun merely peaked through the foggy frost as I swung a leg over my Salsa Las Cruces at Massbach Ridge Winery. Massbach and Derinda Roads were clear as a bell, but what would we find on Heer Road? Ice? Slush? Slop? All three?

The air nipped my nose as I turned off S. Derinda Road. To my great delight, the surface of Heer Road was chip sealed with a just a dusting of snow, salt and sand.

Curtiss Hill Road was gravel but hard packed, and Las Cruces’ Schwalbe tires gripped with confidence as I descended into a hushed valley. Halfway down, I stopped to photograph a barn and met a Peacock clinging to the peak waiting, as I was, for the sun to show itself.

Around the corner, I turned left on Gamble Hill and soon was riding along the north shore of Fitzgerald Lake. At last, the sun appeared to punctuate a particular solitude and mystery which only occurs in the hoar frost of winter.

There is a story about the ghost of an Indian chief which appears around the lake in early morning. I shifted down and commenced climbing in ernest through dark woods up the steep hill to Hanover Road.

During warm easy June cycling days, we sometimes take nature for granted. Only in January when we scarcely have a day or two together can we say we were truly called.