Iditarod Arctic race

An old friend of mine was good enough to pass me this long article on the Iditarod dogsled race through the Arctic.  It reminded him of my father, a fan of Jack London who would recite Robert Service's poem The Cremation of Sam McGee on cold nights at our family's summer house.  The article is interesting, though a bit too cutely self-conscious (as seems to be the wont among my generation of writers, myself included).  It makes me marvel at the lonely, wide wilderness of the Arctic, which for me, as I believe for my father, seems a romantic place to think and read about, though nowhere I've much desire to actually go to and endure.  I'm all for wild places, but my tastes tend toward the controlled, humanized wilderness of places like Wisconsin, and better yet, humanized wilderness in more tropical climes like Africa and Colombia.