"When I was a teenage boy in western Maine, I read the books of Jack London, books about a world of rugged people and hardy animals at home in the frozen woods of the north. Dreaming of that world, I ventured out into the forest on s, and if it was in the middle of a storm, all the better. Deep in the forest I would dig a shallow pit in the snow and using the papery bark peeled from a nearby and dead twigs broken from a , I'd start a crackling fire. The splendor of sparks shooting up into the dark sky, the acrid smoke rising through the falling s, and hare or porcupine meat roasting on a stick over the flames, all enhanced the winter romance."