‘Jack's Oak' finds new life in Glen Ellen

An oak seedling planted gently in the soil Sunday at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen may one day supply shade for the grassy slope where it will soon begin to put down roots.

But perhaps more importantly, it will carry forth the spirit of London, his land and the huge, spreading coast live oak that provided the view during his last years of writing, park supporters say.

Born of an acorn from the majestic tree known at the park as Jack’s Oak, the young seedling will link the future with the past just as its nearly 400-year-old “mother tree” has done, they said.

“We wanted to have Jack’s Oak live on,” the park’s community events manager, Deborah Large, said.

About 35 people gathered for Sunday’s ceremonial planting, one in a series of commemorative events that over the past year and a half have paid homage to the oak whose year-to-year survival can no longer be taken for granted.

The grand oak, which stands off to the side of the cottage that London and his wife, Charmian, once called home, has been weakened by a fungal infection and in 2012 dropped a large limb across a fence, prompting plans for its removal. Concerns that it could jeopardize the historic cottage or even injure someone nearby have been allayed somewhat by testing that suggested its decay would not prevent it from lingering on for a time.

While it lasts, senior state park archaeologist Breck Parkman said, the oak “is a bridge not only to Jack London, but to earlier times, to native times.” He described finding slivers of obsidian around its base, perhaps shaved off a larger stone by an Indian seeking rest in its shade, he said.

It may well have inspired a play titled “The Acorn-Planter,” which London wrote in his last year of life for presentation by the Bohemian Club and in which the acorn is bestowed with the power of life and serves as a metaphor for peace, and it’s said that “one acorn planted was mightier than a hundred fighting men.”

Parkman also recalled an occasion in 1985 when he took four visiting elders from the Tolowa and Yurok Indian tribes to the park, eager to show them London’s cottage. But after running ahead to unlock the door and turn on the lights, then waiting inside for several minutes, he found them outside, under the live oak, their palms pressed to its massive trunk as if communing with it.

It was that experience, he said, that caused him to begin “looking at this tree in a different way.”

During an emotional reading of a poem written for the event, park volunteer and poet Michael Sheffield described the tree as a witness to passing time like the mountain behind it ­- its existence “the promise that was held perfectly in the seed.”

And now “the great oak nears its passage,” said Sheffield, who had to pause several times, because he was so overcome with emotion.

The seedling then planted was raised and nurtured over the past year at nearby Quarryhill Botanical Garden from an acorn that was among about 40 gathered from the only limb of Jack’s Oak that was still bearing fruit when it became clear the majestic oak was in serious decline.

Corey Barnes, Quarryhill’s education coordinator and nursery manager, said it proved a heavy responsibility to be entrusted with such a legacy. Once the acorns were planted, he said, he scratched away at the soil in each planter daily, anxious to see which ones would bear life.

Only 18 of the 40 germinated, but it was enough, producing the stalwart seedling capable of linking the past with the future, Barnes said.

“It’s about the heritage of the tree, and the heritage of the site,” and also an opportunity, Barnes said, to engage with the Earth in a spirit of healing. “We should be ceremonially planting trees everywhere, every day,” Barnes said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.