Yukon Jack

Yukon Jack
back cover advertisement, Epic Illustrated magazine, August 1983

As a major storm dumps snow and cold temperatures on the Northeast, and the media work themselves into a frenzy with Winter Storm Watch coverage, it's time to take heart....... from a most Manly of Advertisements, from way back in 1983......

I have clinched and closed with the naked North

I have learned to defy and defend; Shoulder to

shoulder we have fought it out - yet the wild

must win in the end

[......why Hueblein, Inc., the Yukon Jack importer at that time, thought that Epic Illustrated was the type of magazine whose readership identified with macho, fur-wearing, whiskey-drinkin' mountain men, and thus an ideal publication from which to purchase a full-page back cover ad, is not entirely clear...........?! ]

The advertisement's verse excerpt is from 'The Heart of the Sourdough' by British-Canadian poet Robert William Service (1874 -1958).

Few poems are as Manly as this one............I've pasted it below in its entirety:

The Heart of the Sourdough

There where the mighty mountains
Bare their fangs unto the moon;
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare
In the snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down
At the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep
Their tryst with the tranquil snows;
There where the silences are spawned,
And the light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky,
Violet, amber and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar,
And the ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood
Rush to the setting sun —
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys,
Ere another day is done.
* * * * *


I knew it would call, or soon or late,
As it calls the whirring wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure,
It's the lure of the timeless things;
And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod,
How it whines in my heart-strings!

I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods,
Your make believe and your show;
I long for a whiff of bacon and beans,
A snug shakedown in the snow;
A trail to break, and a life at stake,
And another bout with the foe.

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life,
The Wild that would crush and rend,
I have clinched and closed with the naked North,
I have learned to defy and defend;
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out —
Yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild; I have followed its lure,
Fearless, familiar, alone;
By all that the battle means and makes
I claim that land for mine own;
Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come
When I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought,
The lean wolf-land and I;
Fought and bled till the snows are red
Under the reeling sky;
Even as lean wolf-dog goes down
Will I go down and die.