Jack London, a sailor with a pen in his hand, did not just write about incredible adventures, he lived them as well.

Eventually, he finished high school and about six months of college. Then, bored again, he took off looking for a job. He decided to become a writer because it seemed to offer relief from the tedium of ordinary life. By the age of 21, London would embark on an escapade that would provide pure writing gold for some of his best-selling and most famous work — a prospecting trip to the Yukon Territory in Canada.

Up North

Jack London lived the adventuresome life he wrote about, including prospecting for gold in the frozen Klondike region of Yukon Territory, Canada.

By May of 1898, however, a severe case of scurvy (a disease marked by swollen gums, loose teeth and eventual bleeding under the skin due to lack of vitamin C) caused London to call it quits. He had to wait for milder weather to melt the ice floes on the Yukon River, but once it did, he returned home no richer — but wiser. But the trip had not been a total loss. Something more valuable — a wealth of material for stories and novels — had been gained during the failed quest for gold.

Professional Storyteller

	There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things ... The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as the eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that curved and twisted from around the spruce covered island to the south ... Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt...

At the age of 21, Jack London caught a case of "Klondike fever" and set off to join the gold rush in Canada's Yukon territory.

The Yukon had been exhilarating! Yet, the Klondike adventure was only a short episode in a life crammed with high drama. For a while, London seemed to be interested in settling down and buying a ranch. While it was being renovated, however, he built a ship sturdy enough to sail around the world and transport him to what he called the "big moments of living." This amazing sea journey was immortalized in The Cruise of the Snark. Unfortunately, London became ill and had to return home. Heartbroken that his planned seven-year adventure lasted only 27 months, London returned to ranching and threw himself into the challenges of farming.

Hard Times

Jack London used his experiences in the Yukon as inspiration for White Fang, a novel about a wolf who enters the world of man.

"No writer, unless it is Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London. The untimely death of this most popular of American Fictionists has profoundly shocked a world that expected him to live and work for many years longer," wrote E. J. Hopkins in the San Francisco Bulletin in lamenting London's death. For a man who lived so brightly, his star burned out early when he died at age 40 of kidney failure. But he left a legacy. With his optimistic, larger-than-life personality, Jack London cultivated celebrity in his day, endorsing everything from grape juice to men's clothing. For his many admirers, he personified the "can-do" spirit of the West.

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