00:00:08.990 - 00:00:37.990

Uh huh. Uh huh, Yeah, yeah. The value was so beautiful at night. August 22nd, 1913. Of course, I was just a girl in it was one as it could be in Sonoma County in August, two armed sleep I curled up in the rocking chair on the

00:00:37.990 - 00:00:55.680

porch of our ranch house. Just looking at the beauty moon. Coming up over the east rim of the hills was a magic as the Indian legend that gave this valley it's name okay. And it made me think of of Jack London we'd heard he was going

00:00:55.680 - 00:01:12.200

to write a book about our Valley of the Moon. Jack London. He was a living legend here in the Valley. Most girls my age at that time were secretly in love with him. Why not? The world was in love with Jack London, man. I've been to

00:01:12.200 - 00:01:28.880

his ranch, and I had met him and his wife, Charmian. They had even taken me to see the beautiful new home they were building. They called it Wolf House. It was up there in the dense woods on the side of Sonoma Mountain. It would be nearly

00:01:28.880 - 00:01:47.000

finished now, ready for them to move in and And then I noticed that finger of flame My father had come out of the house and he was looking at it too. It was growing bigger and bigger. And my father said it isn't a forest fire. Ah,

00:01:47.000 - 00:02:09.320

houses burning. I didn't answer him because I knew then there was only one house up there it was Jack London's wolf house and it was burning. I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze. Then

00:02:09.320 - 00:02:46.750

it should be stifled by dry rot. E I would rather be a superb meteor. Every atom of me in magnificent globe than a sleepy and permanent planet. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Yeah, something

00:02:46.750 - 00:03:10.890

hidden. Go and find it. Go and look Behind the ranges Something lost behind the ranges lost and waiting for you Go The valley of the moon stretches ahead dotted with farm houses and varied by pasture land, hay fields and vineyards. When I look out over it

00:03:10.890 - 00:03:29.240

all it kind of makes me ache in the throat with things in my heart I can't find the words to say one of the few times in his life when he couldn't find the words to say the world was Jack London's mistress, and he loved it

00:03:29.370 - 00:03:52.750

and wrote much about it, but better than any other place he had ever known on Earth. He loved his Valley of the moon over a bridge around a sharp turn, all about rose, stately trunks of redwoods, occasional shafts of sunlight warmed the somberness of the grove.

00:03:53.540 - 00:04:15.500

A circle of red columns growing around the dust of Titanic vanished Ancestors. Yeah, Jack London came to the Valley of the Moon in 1905 at the age of 29 when he had already lived enough life for three men above the tree shaded village Glen Ellyn, which

00:04:15.500 - 00:04:34.840

he speaks of so often in his writing. He bought the first acres on the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, sunlit acres that later became the beauty ranch shared by himself and his beloved wife, Charmian. Here was the idol of their golden years together. Charmian, Jack's mate woman,

00:04:34.840 - 00:04:52.060

as he called her, was a daring and accomplished horsewoman, one of the first of her times to ride astride Jack was immensely proud of her as he was of everything on their beauty ranch. The world knows much of his writings, but little of his advanced ideas

00:04:52.060 - 00:05:11.360

on farming. Periodically, he would drive the 20 mile trip from the ranch in Glen Ellyn, over the Bennett Valley Road to Santa Rosa, to the home of his friend and counselor on agricultural matters plant wizard Luther Burbank. From Burbank, he obtained spineless cactus, excellent cattle feed

00:05:11.640 - 00:05:31.200

and many other plants and trees developed by the horticultural genius these he introduces to the beauty ranch as he introduced his own advanced ideas to restore worn out soils, contour cultivation to prevent erosion. Jack London was a wonderful farmer with original ideas on Animal husbandry is

00:05:31.200 - 00:05:56.200

well, the world came to marvel at his revolutionary pig palace. He elevated swine ary to unprecedented finery. He loved every rock, every tree, every animal, every person, everything that was part of his valley of the moon, such a great and abiding love of everything. How could

00:05:56.200 - 00:06:14.880

this be with Jack London, the Jack London who had known so much that was not love or lovable in his brief span of 40 years on Earth? Who's great searching eyes throughout that span mirrored the sorrows and indignities that life itself had seared into his earliest

00:06:14.890 - 00:06:37.560

consciousness. Charming in London, who shared the best years of Jack London's life with him, was also the one to whom he revealed all the pages of his life. John Griffith London was born January 12th, 18 76 in the colorful mid Victorian San Francisco. Of those times,

00:06:37.940 - 00:06:57.080

the first and only child of Flora Uelmen, London and John London. Flora looks very young in this photo. Strangely, though, to Jack London, who was eternally young in heart, there had never been youth in his mother. In his own words, I cannot remember the day when

00:06:57.080 - 00:07:17.540

my mother was not old. It is a question whether Florida's somber outlook on life may have resulted from her marriage to handsome, impractical John London, already a widower, John had sired seven Children of his own. Of him, Jack London wrote, My father was the best man

00:07:17.540 - 00:07:37.360

I have ever known to intrinsically good to get ahead in the soulless scramble for a living that a man must cope with if he will survive impractical, incapable of survival. Perhaps, but John London was an enlightened farmer from whom Jack London absorbed many of the advanced

00:07:37.360 - 00:07:57.090

agricultural ideas. He later applied to the beauty ranch in Glen Ellyn. But there is no telling from whom he absorbed his early fascination with books. Almost the first things I realized were responsibilities. I have no recollection of being taught to read or write. I could do

00:07:57.090 - 00:08:17.530

both. At the age of five, books and escape for him perhaps escaped from the realities of declining family fortunes. John London had started them on a shaky travelogue of moves from one place to another toe a ranch in Livermore Valley, then to a succession of houses

00:08:17.530 - 00:08:37.450

in Oakland. Insecurity, privation failure knocked Mawr insistently at each door. The finger of escape beckoned. The boy, Jack London, invited him to the Oakland estuary, where the things he had read about came exciting leader life, the brave Ship, Seven seas. He would sailed before the mast

00:08:37.450 - 00:09:07.230

in at least one of them in time to come and describe it. In his book, The Seawolf. He would cruise the Solomon Islands as a traitor, and from those cannibal islands would come the impressions for his South Sea tales. Royalties from these and other of his

00:09:07.240 - 00:09:38.290

books would one day enable Jack and Charming in London to build their own lovely vessel. He left us that story in the crews of the Snark, but there would be a prologue toe all this. It would begin when

00:09:38.290 - 00:09:55.990

Jack London was about 13 when for $6 he bought a secondhand skiff. This was a floating doorway to a new world in the boy's life. It taught him the rudiments of that chapter of his life is a sailor. In time, it took him daringly into the

00:09:55.990 - 00:10:15.270

best and the worst weather that San Francisco Bay could muster. And it led him into companionship with some of the hardest bitten characters the Oakland estuary has ever known. The Oyster pirates here, this lad in his mid teens became a man among the roughest and most

00:10:15.270 - 00:10:35.010

dangerous men of his time. Yeah, at 15, I was a man among men, and if I had a spare nickel, I spend it on beer instead of candid. Now, when my years air doubled, I am out on a hunt for the boyhood I never had. He

00:10:35.010 - 00:10:52.040

had to be a man to survive among these older, dangerous companions of his to meet them on their own terms, toe fight and whip them on to exceed the best of them. In there, oyster pirating from one of them, French Frank. He bought the razzle dazzle

00:10:52.040 - 00:11:10.600

with $300 borrowed from his beloved Mammy Jennie, great hearted, colored woman who had wet nursed him as an infant and who adored him. Mammy, Jenny and Jack London's half sister, Eliza London Shepherd, were two of the three women whom he loved more than any others in

00:11:10.600 - 00:11:28.760

his life. In the razzle dazzle on one foggy night, Jack London sailed down the southern reaches of San Francisco Bay to the commercial oyster bed. It was here that he Pirated his first hall of oysters, racing back to the Oakland Worf. At dawn, he sold his

00:11:28.760 - 00:11:47.840

oysters to the eager saloon keepers and tavern owners. He got more for them than he had been paid for. Three months work 13 hours a day in Oakland, Cannery This'll was life. This was success, but it imposed terrible penalties on the boy still in his teens.

00:11:47.850 - 00:12:06.880

For all this excitement, it's money rewards. This was not the life nor the success that Jack London yearned for in his heart, words and what they could express were his true love on. Until he could make the world know what he wanted to say, he could

00:12:06.880 - 00:12:29.240

never be really happy. When the world first began to turn its gaze on this young literary giant, he began his journeys to meet the world's first hand to Japan and Korea to right of the Russell Japanese conflict. Yeah, to England, Wales, where his observations on exploited

00:12:29.240 - 00:12:48.710

humanity became books. People of the abyss, the Iron Heel to Alaska and the Yukon Gold Rush toiling up chill could pass where men with less heart and bigger dropped and died of exhaustion. On In his books, White Fang call of the Wild World learned the meaning

00:12:48.710 - 00:13:13.140

of the frozen north. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless without moving, mhm so loan and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. Wherever on earth, there was a story to be found and told

00:13:13.150 - 00:13:38.670

their went Jack London to put it on paper on. One feels his presence everywhere in his Valley of the moon. It has felt especially in the little village of Glen Ellyn, just below his beauty ranch in that valley. It knew him well. Saw him many times.

00:13:40.740 - 00:14:15.220

Hey, traveled this road. A leafy tunnel leading from Glen Ellyn to Ken would. He has tasted the cool water of this stream. Sonoma Creek, bathed in its deeper pools, knew its secrets. Yeah. Mm. On this secluded spot where a stream he called Wild water joins its

00:14:15.230 - 00:14:34.340

larger sister knew him very well in times gone by. There were several dwellings here, and it was where Jack London first stayed in the Valley of the Moon. This'll was Wake Robin Lodge close to it. He had discovered a wooded retreat with a mosque grown stump

00:14:34.340 - 00:14:57.210

of one of the Titanic redwoods that he loved so much here in the wine like atmosphere of warm summer days, Jack London started and finished his great novel, the Seawolf. The Sea Wolf. Wolf Larsen is the perfect type of primitive man, born 1000 years or generations

00:14:57.220 - 00:15:35.200

too late. It may have been he was describing himself domesticated creature, realistically writing of his own inner ferocity when he was aroused 1000 years or generations too late. The setting is still here, and he is still here. If you walk into it. Horses and dogs, often

00:15:35.200 - 00:15:59.700

along the Sonoma Mountain Road, you'd meet him riding with brown, wolf trotting beside brown Wolf, who still lives in the story of that title, that Jack London Road. Ah, capacity for love. Jack London himself said it was given to him by his half sister, Eliza London

00:15:59.700 - 00:16:17.550

Shepherd, who was a mother as well as a sister to him throughout his life. Except for charming, Jack loved Eliza more than any other woman. She spent her last years in this gracious home on the beauty ranch as ranch manager and saw Jax affection for her

00:16:17.550 - 00:16:38.250

extended to her son, Irving Shepherd, Jack's nephew with Irving Shepherd. One is very close to the legend. Many memories air here, extending to childhood when he and his dashing, world famous uncle would wander together over this lovely ranch. Memories bridging toe bygone days when Jack and

00:16:38.260 - 00:16:57.230

Charming in London lived here in the original ranch house when the furious click of Charming's typewriter would be heard through these windows. For this was Jack's work room, where he wrote his 1000 words a day and one cannot enter it without speaking in hushed tones. This

00:16:57.230 - 00:17:17.480

was the typewriter that clicked here. The Dictaphone that heard his voice, his desk and the very personal things on it. Ah, whimsical note. A dusty Kewpie doll that he kept on his desk for years. A good luck charm who knows his fountain pen, What epics it

00:17:17.490 - 00:17:38.740

wrote, guided by the strong hand that held it a tireless flow of powerful words, vivid descriptions, ringing truths that mirrored the great mind back of them on beside his desk. These things that could bring a catch in the throat. They knew him so well. Yes, this

00:17:38.750 - 00:17:57.930

is the room where he wrote his 1000 words a day. How could he have found time to do so many other things here on his beauty ranch? I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. He used his time

00:17:57.940 - 00:18:24.910

to clear the land, set out orchards till the fields plant nourishing grain. He found a great spring of clear water up there on the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, and he piped the water to build himself a lake. A beautiful woodland like that is still there Justus.

00:18:24.910 - 00:18:45.290

He knew it on beside it, a staunch log cabin made of his beloved redwood. He called it a bathhouse, But like everything else he built, it's bigger and better than that. Just a Z outbuildings he put on the ranch are bigger and better and longer lived

00:18:45.300 - 00:19:05.130

than most. Hey, loves stone, country, rock red, porous, volcanic. He loved it from the moment he saw the ancient stone fences that criss crossed his Valley of the Moon, built so long ago with Indian labor. Stone was in his soul when the time came, when he

00:19:05.130 - 00:19:24.900

wanted a great and lasting home made of it. When he was 34 years old and had turned the world topsy turvy with his writings, Jack London began building his fabled Wolf House site. Overlooked the Valley of the Moon, a setting of ancient redwoods, MMA drones, Man's

00:19:24.900 - 00:19:44.580

Anita's. By now, the illness Yuri Mia, from which he died, was taking a heavy toll of Jack London's energies and help. But Wolf House must be paid for with the fruit of his brain. During the three years of its construction, he wrote feverishly hey had noticed

00:19:44.580 - 00:20:16.260

during its building one Great and odd shaped stone, which the builders rejected. It would play a requiem in time. Oh, lovely, beautiful won't house. On the night of August 22nd, 1913, Jack and Charming in London were ready to move into this final dream of his. In

00:20:16.260 - 00:21:07.430

the middle of that terrible night, they were awakened by the sound of voices shouting, trying their names, agonized voices calling to them to come. Wolf House was burning way. No one will know fully what happened to Jack London when he

00:21:07.430 - 00:21:35.470

saw his dream go up in flames. But those close to him that night knew that something was dying in. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze that it should be stifled by dry rot. Three years later, at the age of

00:21:35.480 - 00:22:03.130

40 in this little room in which he had breathed the spark of life into so many stories that still live, his own magnificent spark flickered and died out forever. Many years ago, while exploring the wooded portions of the beauty ranch, he had discovered the graves of

00:22:03.140 - 00:22:21.540

to pioneer Children Little David and Lily Greenlaw, Child David had died the year Jack London was born he had been deeply moved, and he told Charmian that he would like to be buried close to these Children. It seemed it would be less lonely for him. And

00:22:21.550 - 00:22:42.900

for them there was one thing more. The stone the builders rejected. For Wolf House. It, too, should have a purpose. He wanted it placed over his grave. And there he rests among the oaks MMA drones. Man's Anita's. I shall not waste my days in trying to

00:22:42.910 - 00:23:05.340

prolong them. I shall use my time. What did he really leave us world in his writings, the world and its people as he knew it, and them in his times. And much of it is the same. Over 50 books, hundreds of short stories, articles, poems, papers

00:23:05.340 - 00:23:22.440

and commentaries all created in less than 20 years of his life. And he left us a perpetual legend in the beautiful state park that bears his name and covers part of his beauty ranch. Up there back of Glen Ellen. He left us his presence in the

00:23:22.440 - 00:23:48.380

Valley of the Moon. Warm, strong, vibrant, and it's so very easy to picture him everywhere in that valley. Uh huh. When I look out over it all. It kind of makes me ache in the throat with the things in my heart. I can't find the words

00:23:48.380 - 00:24:47.850

to say Thank you, E right.