User:Raven.dickerson/sandbox

Overview
The 1908 short story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, is the adventure of a man who should not have set out by himself. With his husky, it is almost mission impossible in the freezing conditions to get to the next camp where men await him. Though he starts determined, he encounters many life or death situations and eventually dies from hypothermia.

Plot
Even though he was told not to by an experienced hiker, he sets out with his husky in the terrible, below freezing conditions dangerous to man. Leaving at 9 am, "the man plans to travel to another camp" by 6 pm. With miles to walk through feet of snow and ice, he avoids stopping until he eats his lunch: "pieces of bread, each of which enclosed a generous portion of cooked meat." Not long after, he encounters his first obstacle: a lake with a thick layer of ice topping it. While he gets the dog to walk in front of him most the time, he still manages to slip his leg through the ice. He quickly loses feeling in his toes and foot and must start a fire to warm them and dry his boot. He attempts to do this under a tree while grabbing sticks from it. He accidentally grabs a branch covered in snow and it drops onto the small flame he just worked for. With his hands now numb as well as his foot, he concludes that he will definitely lose some fingers or toes. Since his body has been still instead of his face paced walk, the numbness spreads. He quickly tries to start another fire but "his fingers are lifeless and frostbitten" making it impossible for him to grab a match. He finally uses his mouth to grab the whole bundle of matches to light at once. He burns his flesh while the fire starts, but gets it going away from the bottom of a tree. However, he tries to remove a piece of moss that might put out the fire. The piece ends up slipping further in and killing the flame. Now out of matches, the only way the man can survive is to wrap himself inside of the husky's skin. He tries calling the dog over, but it senses the stern in the man's voice and does not obey. The man then realizes, he couldn't harm the dog for himself anyway, and lays there facing the fact that he will soon die. After a few short minutes, he begins to hallucinate seeing the men from his camp come to rescue him.