In “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the fight between a man and a dog that defines the life and death struggle to survive in the frozen lands of the territory of Yukon. The story depicts man's struggles to make a fire in these extremely cold conditions, illustrating the seemingly life/death dualism of man versus Nature. However, a dog patiently follows man wherever he goes, which also illustrates the tendency of life to seek other forms of life in these terrible conditions: "It did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe" (James and Merickel 302). However, the proud man must face the dog that follows him, as the lack of food eventually drives him to attempt to kill the dog. When he fails, he succumbs to hunger, cold, and finally death. Ironically, the dog will enjoy the remains of man, as part of the cycle of life and death in the ecosystem. This is one way in which nature's holistic ecosystem is defined as the way humans and animals must coexist to survive. In “A Blizzard Under Blue Sky” by Pam Houston, the same winter conditions of the London tale define the struggle to survive in a blizzard and the cooperation necessary between dogs and humans to coexist and survive. The unknown