Call of the Wild Festival 2026

This past weekend was the 150th anniversary of Jack London’s birth. He was born January 12, 1876 in San Francisco. After a childhood spent at various ranches in San Mateo and Livermore, and then an adolescence in Oakland, interrupted by a stint traveling on trains (for which he was arrested for vagrancy in Wisconsin), in 1905 he purchased Hill Ranch, which became the foundation for his 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch. Today you may see all of it preserved as the Jack London State Park, complete with a museum located in his wife Charmian’s house (House of Beautiful Walls) she built after his passing. 

A parent of four of my former students, Nancy Lasseter, sits on the board of the park, and, upon discovering that I am currently between jobs, she asked if I ever told Jack London stories. “No,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t try!”

This year I was honored to have been asked to give two performances as part of the Call of the Wild Festival, which happens every year at the park. I gave two half-hour performances on the second floor of the museum. 

I was delighted. Jack London had been my favorite author as an elementary school student, and it was wonderful to revisit the enormous body of work he produced in his short lifetime. My favorites had always been Call of the Wild, White Fang, and the short story, “To Build a Fire.” I shared the love of these with my mother, whose copy of Call of the Wild I now own.

To prepare I read a wonderful biography, Jack London: An American Life, which traces the various stages of his life with as much drama and vibrant detail as the stories he wrote. I realized quickly that there are four main bodies of work by this prolific writer: stories about the San Francisco Bay where he spent his early years, stories about Alaska for which he is most famous, but then I was surprised by how much he wrote about the Pacific Islands, where he traveled on his custom built boat, the Snark, and The Valley of the Moon, where he kept his ranch and built his homes. I saw a wonderful opportunity for a large, lifetime project, befitting a storyteller based in Sonoma County such as myself. 

I decided to work chronologically and begin with the San Francisco Bay. He wrote Tales of the Fish Patrol at the same time he was writing Call of the Wild. What I love about this collection of stories is that it features places that are familiar to me, where I have spent hours of my life fishing: Vallejo and Carquinez Straits, Napa River, San Pablo Bay, Points Pedro and Pablo, McNear’s Beach. 

I learned a lot in curating the stories, cutting a selection, and then beginning to learn a story laden with literary language and the jargon of fishing boats in the 1890s. I began by simply reciting the text I had produced, a twenty-minute selection of the collection mainly centered around two of the antagonists, a Greek fisherman named Demetrios Contos and a Chinese shrimp fisherman referred to as Yellow Handkerchief. It was fascinating to observe myself as I grappled with the language and eventually began molding it from a recitation of a literary text to a story to be told. Slowly I found pathways through the descriptions of the turbulent bay waters, and I was able to create voices and postures for the characters. 

I have always told personal stories mainly about my years in the Ozarks where my mother is from. I liked the idea of being the author or creator of my own stories, but this experience has changed the way I feel about storytelling. Ultimately, I felt like there was a lot of myself in the performance I gave of Jack London’s tales. And what a special experience to share a moment on the stage with this literary giant! To not only be his vessel, which would have been befitting a reading or a recitation, but also to embody his characters, give them voices and choreography, and to try to really touch the audience with their power. 

I want to thank Nancy Lasseter for her vision and for her trust in me. She believed in me even though I had never done anything like this before. 

I also want to thank Ciara Pegg, who is in charge of the community programming at the park. I am sure she had no idea what to expect, and it was endearing to see her amused smile as kept ducking in to catch fragments of the performance and eventually appreciated what was meant when I said I would be telling his stories and not reading them. 

I was moved to tears when… in walked a group of my former students and their families. I have missed my students very much since leaving my former high school, and what really caused my voice to catch was when a graduating senior said to me that being in the audience was just like being in my classroom again… and that they have missed it. 

If Ciara and the museum/park is willing, I would next like to work on a performance of Jack London’s greatest short story, “To Build a Fire.” I plan on weaving the Prometheus myth through this masterful short story. Therefore the performance will be called: “A Yukon Prometheus.”