I would rather be ashes than dust

This isn't the image you'd expect from Sonoma Country, the sister to Napa Valley. Sonoma is the sun-splashed home to rolling hills, their round pates parted by rows of grape vines. Vines that in September are weighed down with pointy bunches of grapes that look strangely like teats. Wine is the milk of the gods.

I do have several lovely photos of the grapes, the vines, the hills, and Michael and me, gods of the fabled Sonoma county, tasting the fruit of the bountiful vines. But this place, the ruins of Wolf House on Sonoma mountain, touched me.

Jack London, author of Call of the Wild, White Fang and the terrifying story, To Build a Fire, built this grand structure. He dreamed it and then dared to plan and build it, only to watch it burn days before he and his wife and three children were to move in. Jack died three years later; some say of a broken heart. He is buried under a huge boulder that was deemed too large for use in the foundation of Wolf House. Is there a lesson here?

Was his Wolf House an exercise in vanity? Did this great house burn down to the boulders and the lonely towering chimneys to prove the foolishness of the endeavor? I don't think so. It was a remarkable venture, just as his writing was. The words still stand.

And here's something I found he wrote just weeks before he died of kidney failure:

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark shall burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me a magnificent glow,
than a sleepy 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.

Me too.