{"id":250,"date":"2015-05-14T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T18:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.themes.com\/?page_id=250"},"modified":"2015-05-14T18:22:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T18:22:08","slug":"left-sidebar","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/templates\/left-sidebar\/","title":{"rendered":"Left Sidebar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.\u00a0 The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light.\u00a0 A vast silence reigned over the land.\u00a0 The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.\u00a0 There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness\u2014a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.\u00a0 It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life.\u00a0 It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.<\/p>\n

\"waterfall-sm\"<\/a>But there was<\/i> life, abroad in the land and defiant.\u00a0 Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs.\u00a0 Their bristly fur was rimed with frost.\u00a0 Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost.\u00a0 Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind.\u00a0 The sled was without runners.\u00a0 It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow.\u00a0 The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it.\u00a0 On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box.\u00a0 There were other things on the sled\u2014blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.<\/p>\n

In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man.\u00a0 At the rear of the sled toiled a second man.\u00a0 On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,\u2014a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again.\u00a0 It is not the way of the Wild to like movement.\u00a0 Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement.\u00a0 It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man\u2014man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.<\/p>\n

\"horses-grazing\"But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead.\u00a0 Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather.\u00a0 Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible.\u00a0 This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost.\u00a0 But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.<\/p>\n

They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies.\u00a0 On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence.\u00a0 It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver.\u00a0 It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree.\u00a0 It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.<\/p>\n

\"portfolio-11\"
The frozen waterway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An hour went by, and a second hour.\u00a0 The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air.\u00a0 It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away.\u00a0 It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness.\u00a0 The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind.\u00a0 And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.\u00a0 The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252,"parent":211,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-left-sidebar.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-250","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","no-comments"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/organicthemes.com\/demo\/vital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}