the midnight sun
Sometimes they went hungry , sometimes they feasted riotously , all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting . Summer arrived , and dogs and men packed on their backs , rafted across blue mountain lakes , and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest . The months came and went , and back and forth they twisted through the uncharted vastness , where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin were true . They went across divides in summer blizzards , shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows , dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies , and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast . In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country , sad and silent , where wildfowl had been , but where then there was no life nor sign of life -- only the blowing of chill winds , the forming of ice in sheltered places , and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches . And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of men who had gone before . Once , they came upon a path blazed through the forest , an ancient path , and the Lost Cabin seemed very near .