This old barn in Glen Ellen, California is a castle of light and rust. It is among the remains of Jack London's Beauty Ranch, a sprawling collection of defunct structures preserved as a State Park. A single photograph cannot do justice to the spirit of this place, where what remains of London's dream can be seen in crumbling ruins such as this, where filtered sunlight illuminates the spokes of an old iron wheel. It doesn't take special psychic powers to feel the haunting presence of Jack London here. Everywhere you look, everywhere you wander on the sprawling grounds of what is now a state park, the man who both wrote and heeded the call of the wild feels alive and present.
Before he was a best-selling author Jack London was a seal hunter, an oyster pirate, a gold prospector and a war correspondent. His biography reads like one of the adventure stories he's so famous for, but his life can best be summed up by his personal credo:
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
I would rather that my spark should burn out
in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
This was a man who lived. This was a man who did things and built things and let it all ride on a dream. Jack London dreamed. His prospector's soul never died. The man who wrote To Build a Fire - regarded by some as the greatest short story ever written had a fire burning inside of him. He was a perfect meteor who burned out in a brilliant blaze. He wrote these lines several weeks before his dream house was destroyed by fire.
This is what's left of Wolf House, the remains of what was to be a 15, 000 square foot mansion nestled in the Sonoma County redwoods on London's property. It is a sad and lonely place. These walls, with empty holes where windows were to be hung, seem like a more fitting tribute to the man than the grave marker he left for himself. What better tombstone than this?
Leaf-filtered light streams through the empty shell of London's physical legacy, just as his own body, wracked by kidney failure and weakened by an early bout of scurvy, was itself a broken filter through which the light of words poured through. And they were good words, strong words, words that spoke of men who struggled against the forces of nature and were vanquished by it. London's effort to ranch these harsh lands was also a struggle against nature and in the end, as it always does, nature won.
The stone that marks Jack London's grave was taken from the remains of the Wolf House ruins. There is no other marker above it, no epitaph or polished marble. His work speaks for him instead. A writer's work is his epitaph and this is especially true of a man whose best character was the wild. A stone covered by moss and lichen and ferns and dead leaves. London poured everything he had into this place. He wrote his last few books in order to support it - and those were the most controversial. He was accused of plagiarism and admitted it, to a degree. He needed the money to build his dream house, which wound up succumbing to that great force of nature, fire. In To Build a Fire, the man dies for failure to build one. The irony is staggering. Sometimes real life is even more poetic than poetry.
This is what's left of Wolf House, the remains of what was to be a 15, 000 square foot mansion nestled in the Sonoma County redwoods on London's property. It is a sad and lonely place. These walls, with empty holes where windows were to be hung, seem like a more fitting tribute to the man than the grave marker he left for himself. What better tombstone than this?
Leaf-filtered light streams through the empty shell of London's physical legacy, just as his own body, wracked by kidney failure and weakened by an early bout of scurvy, was itself a broken filter through which the light of words poured through. And they were good words, strong words, words that spoke of men who struggled against the forces of nature and were vanquished by it. London's effort to ranch these harsh lands was also a struggle against nature and in the end, as it always does, nature won.
The stone that marks Jack London's grave was taken from the remains of the Wolf House ruins. There is no other marker above it, no epitaph or polished marble. His work speaks for him instead. A writer's work is his epitaph and this is especially true of a man whose best character was the wild. A stone covered by moss and lichen and ferns and dead leaves. London poured everything he had into this place. He wrote his last few books in order to support it - and those were the most controversial. He was accused of plagiarism and admitted it, to a degree. He needed the money to build his dream house, which wound up succumbing to that great force of nature, fire. In To Build a Fire, the man dies for failure to build one. The irony is staggering. Sometimes real life is even more poetic than poetry.
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