There are three Valleys of the Moon. The first Valley of the Moon was immortalized by Jack London, world-renowned author and adventurer, who arrived in the Sonoma Valley with his new bride in 1905, and fell in love with the golden landscape and its tree-studded hills. Soon, the couple purchased a large ranch, and there they continued to live and work until Lack London died in 1916 at the age of forty.
The second Valley of the Moon is my home in Finland… an old wooden farmhouse, set in an orchard of apple trees, where I live and work with my family. The third Valley of the Moon existed in the young minds and hearts of my parents during WWII, and helped them to survive the horrors and loneliness of wartime in a ravaged land, and gave them hope for the future.
Here is my story: I was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1954, and as a young boy, I enjoyed reading the novels of Jack London, which my parents had painstakingly collected for their extensive home library. The Valley of the Moon, especially, made a deep and lifelong impression. This story of a man and woman, seeking their own place in time, and the fulfillment of their lives, seemed to me a novel of great wisdom.
During my childhood and youth, my family was part of the Finnish community in St. Petersburg, which traced its roots to immigrants several hundred years ago, and which managed to maintain Finnish language and identity in spite of the severe consequences for “national minorities”.
After completing my studies, I continued my interests in history, languages and culture with my employment as a tour guide. In this role, I met my future wife Anne, a pretty Finnish girl who happened to be one of the participants in my official tour! Eventually, we were married, and I “immigrated” to Finland, to settle in the homeland of my ancestors.
I never forgot the writings of Jack London, or his novel The Valley of the Moon. When Anne and I purchased our own farmhouse and orchard land (in 1991) near Lake Tuusula, we named it “Valley of the Moon” to reflect our connection with Jack London’s vision. Our setting is an intimate valley, containing a giant-size flat rock (a magnet for children’s play), where a golden haze filters through the trees on summer mornings. Here, we repair the house, and daily we care for our orchard and our children.
One day, while looking through an old box of my personal belongings, packed long ago in St. Petersburg, I discovered the “third” Valley of the Moon: the box contained about sixty letters written by my parents to each other, during the harshest war years of 1942-45. They had been childhood friends in the Finnish community, but were not yet married, and their relationship deepened through an exchange of letters. My father was serving in the Soviet army as a radio operator, in the bleak battlefields of the Eastern front; my mother war evacuated to Chelyabinsk, where she received most of his letters. His letter of January 5, 1944, reads… “I’m now living like a god: listening to wonderful music, and reading a magnificent book… the book I’m reading now, tells about happiness, how a man and a woman loved each other very strongly, and decided firmly to find happiness, and, of course, they did find it. This book is called Valley of the Moon, by Jack London. I advise you to read it, if you have not, and reread it, if you did…”
And now, here I am in Finland, reading my father’s letters in the lovely surroundings of our own “Valley of the Moon.” I imagine his loneliness, isolation and struggle for survival as I read the letters. 1942 was a terrifying year. My father’s parents and elder sister died of starvation during the 900-day siege of Leningrad, and my father himself was in constant danger, positioned near the front lines. However, he remained convinced that the vision of Jack London’s novel, and the steadfast love of my mother, would enable him to survive. With the “third” Valley of the Moon in his mind and heart, he believed he would live to fulfill his destiny with the woman he loved. And he did it.
To close this story: I came to California for the first time in August 2002 (following a World Conference of International Translators in Vancouver) to visit a friend, Loli Sergo, and her Oakmont friends, Dan and Armie Scarlett. I did not know I would also find Jack London’s Valley of the Moon…so, my pleasure and excitement were profound when we drove into Glen Ellen, and Loli said, “This is the Valley of the Moon!” The next day we all explored the Jack London State Historic Park, and I was quite overwhelmed with happiness. I thought of my parents, their Valley of the Moon, and of our Valley of the Moon in Finland, and the vision and spirit of Jack London which infuses all three. The circle is closed.
© Àndrei Tarsalainen, Kenwood Press, February 15, 2003.