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I love reciting this poem on cold, cold campouts. Service was a down-an-outer ("for bread I often bummed a bite, and lousy bunks I knew") who had tried everything before writing The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee. The royalties from those two basically allowed him to retire to France (where Service, a Canadian, drove ambulances in WWI). He has a great poem in answer to those who say his new-found weath and notoriety were "luck," which ends "my turning point in luck, you see, refulgently began, the night I roasted Sam McGee and perforated Dan."

All that said, the best -- the absolute hands down best -- Service poem for cold nights and campfires, is The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill. It's the story of a man who accepted money from a miner/trapper to find his body and bury it if he died in the wilds of the Yukon Territory -- apparently contracts to bury were common during the gold rush. The narrator finds Bill's body on the floor of his cabin, glittering with ice, frozen stiff with arms and legs outspread ("hard as a log and trussed like a frog"). He tries for days to thaw Bill out, with no luck. Finally, the narrator resorts to the only way he can think of to get frozen Bill in the coffin. The last line, delivered in a calm low voice around a campfire, cements a Boy Scout's memories of cold weather camping forever: "I often think of poor old Bill, and how hard he was to saw." When you finish, the silence is complete and look on the Scouts' faces is priceless.

It was my joy to recite Blasphemous Bill at a cold, New-Mexico-mountains-campfire at Beaubien, Philmont Scout Ranch, several years ago.

You should also read The Ballad of Athabasca Pete, whose main concern when going over a waterfall (having fallen out of a boat), is to keep his bottle of liquor from breaking.

Finally, find a copy of Bessie's Boil, about a shy young woman with a carbuncle very close to a delicate bodily opening, who goes to the hospital. She shows her dermatological outbreak to a man in a white coat, who sends her to another room for a second opinion from another man in white . . . and again and again until one of the men tells her to see a doctor about it -- on the floor below -- seems all of the physician offices have been relocated while the floor she's on is being painted.

If you haven't figured it out, I love Robert W. Service's work. I often recite him when the going gets tough on a backpacking trip. I've done miles and miles at Philmont to Robert W. Service.

Thanks for bringing back those memories!