It's in the genes I guess, or perhaps inside the atoms of newly forming testosterone that lead a boy to literature like Call of the Wild or other novels by Jack London. Then there are the poems that boys allow other boys to know they have read. One of those by Robert Service, the Cremation of Sam Magee. Back in the day of radio shows, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon was popular fare for boys whose imaginations were going beyond their hometown out into an unknown world yet to be explored. Alaska seemed to hold a special place in the minds of many boys. They seemed to sense that it took a different kind of man to live in a place so cold and so sparsely populated, a place for men comfortable with themselves and their own thoughts.

Here is a good recitation of THE CREMATION OF SAM MAGEE, by Hank Snow.