In the cottage, the museum and amongst the trees so dear to Jack London

“I devote myself to farming because my philosophy and my research have taught me to recognise that a return to the land is the foundation of the economy...Do you realise that I spend two hours a day writing and ten on farming? My work on this land and my message to America go hand in hand.” It has been 150 years since Jack London’s birth, yet when you stand before his cottage within the State Historic Park that bears his name in Glen Helen, California, it really does feel as though you are looking at the author of *The Star Rover* himself, hoeing the soil. This is partly because, as soon as you cross the threshold of this wooden building – where the original rooms have been reconstructed – you are immediately met by photographs of the writer alongside his second wife, Charmian Kittredge, his typewriter, the bedroom, and the furniture brought back from their travels across the Pacific. The couple would later move into a stone house. A short walk away lies the Wolf House, which boasts a unique history: Jack London often wrote about wolves and dogs, particularly in *White Fang*, so much so that he himself came to be nicknamed ‘The Wolf’. So when construction of this house began in 1911, he gave it the same nickname. It is a pity, however, that the Wolf House caught fire shortly before the work was completed; only the walls that can still be seen today remained standing, Fortunately, however, The House of Happy Walls Museum remains intact; it was built by Charmian London and Eliza Shepard, Jack London’s half-sister, following his death. It now houses artefacts documenting the marital ups and downs of Jack and his wife – the inexhaustible sources of inspiration that gave rise to this Arts and Crafts-style home, built exclusively from natural materials and in harmony with the landscape. In addition to an exhibition on the medicines – both legal and illegal – that London took throughout his life, excursions are organised to embrace the trunks of the centuries-old sequoias that tower high around the Beauty Ranch. Private excursions offer the chance to get close to Fern Lake, visit the orchard, and venture deep into the forests of London State Historic Park.