Probably the first impression of California that I got in my childhood was from the books of Jack London. His books are not only about Alaska, as many people think.
Eighty kilometers from San Francisco, near the town of Glenn Ellen is the ranch, which he bought as soon as began to earn the first money for his books.
During the last years of his life, educating himself through the study of agricultural manuals, Jack wanted to organize a perfect ranch here. He also dreamed to build a huge stone mansion called “Wolf House”, in which he can take many friends and which would stand the thousands of years.
As the mansion was almost completed and just a week before London planned to move in, it was destroyed by fire for some unknown reason. Jack was going to restore it, but did not have time – at the age of 40, this wonderful man – traveler, writer, dreamer, drunkard, was gone.
The ranch, which now, of course, is a National Park, consists of two different parts. The fists part is located on a sun-drenched valley surrounded by mountains and vineyards. Here is a small writer’s house and a farm. The second part is the thicket of the magical forest, in which, surrounded by sequoias, the Wolf House must have been. Now only stone remnants of it are there.
There, under a simple stone, lies the ashes of Jack London.
P.S. When you enter the forest, from the beginning you come across a sign “beware of snakes”, after a few steps you are warned that in these places you can meet a Puma and, at the end, you find out that there is a poisonous oak in this woodland. ” As the days grow longer, the storms are stronger” I thought :).
