Meaning:
The appeal of nature in the raw.
Background:
Jack London had a novel of this name published in 1903, although the phrase
may have preceded this.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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It was hard for the call of the wild to reach the North China Plain as the
fertile soil had been tilled for millennia. As kids, we used to play in the
village corn fields, on the crumbling ancient city walls, or in the stinking
river by the paper mill. That was as close to nature in the raw as we got. The
past years had seen shop fronts lining both sides of the artery through the
county, taking up every inch and screening off the farmland, and with cameras
flashing five meters above ground spaced every 500m all the way to the capital.
The wild had completely checked out.
