Serendipity and Writing Retreats

 

I write this from Kaneohe on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The trade winds blow through windows that look out on the jagged Ko’olau Range. The desk at which I am working belongs to the grandson of a primary character in my biography about Jack London and his formative, lifelong relationship with San Francisco Bay. My host’s “grandpa” was Yoshimatsu Nakata, London’s longtime valet, first mate, and surrogate son.

I am on a two-month writing retreat. While this retreat is extra special, it is an example of the type of writing retreat I have given myself for years: When friends and family go on vacation, I retreat to their houses and write.

Most people associate writing retreats with residency programs. As an example, I launched my biography about Ina Coolbrith during a month-long residency at Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks, where I studied my subject and swam in the lake every day. As the leaves started to change color at the end of September, the mail carrier told me, “We don’t do that here.”

Residency programs are great but there is another way to give yourself the gift of concentrated writing, and that is the way that led me to Kaneohe. It’s simple, with no application or competition required. When friends and family go on a trip, I lug my materials to their homes in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Gilroy, California (or in this case, across the ocean to Oahu), and work without the distractions of home. Yes, I walk the dog, clean the kitty litterbox, and put the chickens in a coop at night, but these are minor chores compared to the rewards. Separation from your own living space results in concentrated writing time that can help you go deeper and make connections, get more work done, and form new habits. 

Here in Kaneohe, I have established a new routine. I go to bed early and wake up naturally before dawn. While the coffee is brewing, I shun my phone with its distracting emails and disturbing news. Instead, I do five sun salutations and read a poem. I got the poem idea from editor Susan Leon at the most recent Biography Lab. (I was here in Oahu during the Lab and that afternoon found a Poem a Day book in my host’s bathroom.) .

Serendipity can happen on a writing retreat. More than a decade ago, while working on a biography of the poet Ina Coolbrith, I was on a retreat at a friend’s house in Berkeley, California. One day on my routine lunchtime walk in the residential hills, I discovered a cluster of paths, stairways, and streets named after literary men I had been writing about that morning! Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Mark Twain were represented, but where was Ina? The byways were all named after men, most of whom had left California, whereas Ina had stayed and become California’s first poet laureate (and has recently been inducted into the 2025 CA Hall of Fame). To include her, I recited her poetry on subsequent walks.

Ina Coolbrith Circle's Richard Angilly and Claire Baker
(with me in the middle) help celebrate the new path in 2017.

When the book was finished, I gave a reading at a Berkeley bookstore and suggested that Harte give up one of his four byways. Several local groups heeded the call and changed the name of Bret Harte Lane to Ina Coolbrith Path and installed a handsome biography plaque at the bottom of the stairway.

Serendipity can happen, but poop also happens when there are dogs, cats, bunnies, and chickens involved. It is unlikely that you, like me, will get locked in a chicken coop at dusk without your phone for 30 minutes before discovering the string that sets you free, or that you will have a naughty beagle that growls at your host’s puppy at mealtime. You will, however, leave the dishes in the sink, cook when you feel like it, and remain un-showered for days to put your writing first.

My writing retreats usually last from five days to two weeks, so how is it that I get to stay at this comfortable and quiet home in Kaneohe for two whole months? I met my host by letter and then visited him and his wife in Kaneohe last year. They graciously showed me family photos and we paid our respect at Nakata’s grave (everyone called him Nakata, not Yoshimatsu). Back at home in California, I shared all my research about Nakata with his grandson. He was grateful because although as a boy he knew his grandpa, the two never talked about Nakata’s early years with London. After leaving London’s employ, Nakata became a dentist and lived a long and fruitful life in Honolulu. 

Last summer, my hosts visited Jack London State Park in Glen Ellen, California. I arranged for a docent to show them around and joined them. As we drove around the park in a bumpy golf cart, I mentioned my writing retreats. I wasn’t thinking about their home in Oahu, but they latched onto the idea. They wanted to travel and, as they are supportive of my project, the plan blossomed from there.

Today, my hosts are in India, and I am in Kaneohe. The wall behind the desk is covered with framed family photos. At top center is a photo of Nakata as a fit and healthy old man. He looks kind and quietly satisfied with his life. I cannot help but smile when I glance at him, surrounded by photos of his progeny. I feel pride for this Issei who came to Hawaii as a Japanese immigrant and who at seventeen signed on as London’s cabin boy aboard the Snark in Hilo, Hawaii. I thank Nakata for the pivotal role he played in the last years of London’s life and for making me feel at home in Kaneohe.

——

A longer version of this essay first appeared in “The Biographer’s Craft: The Magazine for Writers and Readers of Biography,” Biographers International Organization, April 2025, V 20, No 2. Aleta has been a member of Biographers International Organization since 2021.

 

"Amistad en popa: London y Nakata" in Mexico City's El Universal newspaper

Image courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

Several months ago I received an email from a reporter in Mexico City who had read an article I wrote about the discovery of Nakata's diaries, "Nakata's Smile: Unlocking the Diaries of Jack London's Valet." She interviewed me about London and Nakata's relationship and my book in progress about Jack London and San Francisco Bay.

The resulting article and interview, "Amistad en popa: London y Nakata," came out in El Universal on March 9, 2025. The article is in Spanish. To read it in English you can tap the translate icon in a Google search bar.

Professors Nagako Muto and Takaharu Mori from the International University of Kagoshima adapted and translated a three-month section of the 1914 diary for my book in progress, with assistance from graduate students Kaoru Nishihara, Chisato Kubota, and Sato Shirakubo.

Yoshimatsu Nakata's Hawaiian Home

In the deep shade of an 80-foot-tall monkeypod tree in the O'ahu Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii, I paid my respects to Yoshimatsu Nakata, Jack London's longtime valet and surrogate son.

Nakata was central to London's life, and is featured in my book in progress about London's formative and lifelong relationship with the San Francisco Bay.

Nakata started as a cabin boy on the Snark, the boat that London built to sail around the world. When the trip was cut short, Nakata returned to California as the author's valet. Nakata was also London's first mate and surrogate son.

After eight years, Nakata married his sweetheart, Momoyo, and left London to study dentistry. In Honolulu he opened a successful practice, raised his children, Gertrude and Edward, and was elected president of the Hawaii Dental Association. He died in 1967 at age seventy-eight.

I visited the Nakata family gravesite with Yoshimatsu's grandson James Nakata, Edward's son, and his lovely wife, Lisa.

In the Japanese tradition, Jim washed the marble stone with water and a sponge in homage to his ancestors.

Nakata purchased the stone and site for his family, and I couldn't help but feel proud of him, an Issei who had migrated to Hawaii as a teenager.

Jim's office includes photos of his "grandpa." The cabinet at right was in the dental office that Yoshimatsu shared with his son, Edward, who became a dentist and a partner in the practice. 

The historic photos are courtesy of The Huntington Libary. All others by Aleta George.

Nakata's Smile

The Huntington Library,
San Marino, CA

Yoshimatsu Nakata won me over with his smile.

He was Jack London's valet for eight years, but he was more than that.

He sailed the South Seas with London on the Snark, the yacht that London built to his own specifications.

He embarked with his boss on a trip around the Horn on the tall ship Dirigo.

And he was first mate on the last boat that London owned and sailed on the San Francisco Bay, the Roamer.

The Huntington Library,
San Marino, CA

In early 2022, I found two of Nakata's personal diaries, a real find since Nakata is a central character in my book in progress, a place-based biography about London and the San Francisco Bay. 

Here is my story in California magazine about finding the diaries, the long journey of translation, and my continuing fascination with this young man who London considered more of a son or younger brother.

Nakata's Smile: Unlocking the Diaries of Jack London's Valet

Jack London on the Carquinez Strait

The unseasonable rain on June 5, 2022, didn't dampen the spirits of the 30 passengers aboard the Pacific Pearl for a Jack London-themed boat tour of the Carquinez Strait.

Gail Yamamoto Seymour, Tarnel Abbott (London's great granddaughter), and Jack London Society president Jay Williams take in the stories and views from the bow.

As tour guide, I told stories about London and his lifelong relationship with the San Francisco Bay, with a focus on the Carquinez Strait.

 

The chartered tour started at the Vallejo Yacht Club, where London was a member. We then motored up the Strait to Benicia and back. 

"I learned many facts," said Jack London State Park docent Wendy Byrd. "Best of all, I can visualize my readings of Jack London with a context of where events took place. I, too, will never cross the Carquinez Bridge without thinking of Jack in the water."

This event was planned in coordination with the Jack London Society.

Jack London's Wheel?

The Roamer wheel

Hugh and Jeremy Wire grew up in a house on a hill overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach, California. In their yard was a wheel said to have come from one of Jack London’s boats.

I learned about the wheel from Hugh’s daughter, Annette Williams, who has inherited the house and the wheel.

Curious about whether or not the wheel actually did come from one of London’s boats, I asked her to send me a photo of the family wheel for comparison.

The family wheel

It seemed a straightforward investigation. Aside from the rowboat and centerboard skiff London skittered about on as a youth, he owned only four boats during his lifetime: the Razzle Dazzle, the Spray, the Snark, and the Roamer. We have photos of all but one wheel.

You can read about the wheel and the boat she came from in an essay I wrote for The Call, The Magazine of the Jack London Society (Spring/Summer 2021). 

Jack London and his wife Charmian roam the San Francisco Bay circa 1910

Jack London aboard the Roamer. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Jack London was known for his world adventures, but his training ground — and lifelong love — was the San Francisco Bay. As a boy he learned to sail a skiff in the Oakland Estuary, and at sixteen he ran with the oyster pirates before jumping ship to crew for the California Fish Patrol. London wrote The Sea Wolf aboard a sailboat purchased from the sale of Call of the Wild, and in his final years he and his wife, Charmian, spent a month a year exploring and feasting on the bay and in the Delta. 

"Always I come back to the sea,” wrote London. “In my case it is usually [the] San Francisco Bay, than which no lustier, tougher sheet of water can be found for small-boat sailing.”*

One of the primary sources for my book in progress about Jack London and the San Francisco Bay is Charmian Kittridge London's diaries. To coincide with the publication of the first full-length biography of Charmian London (written by friend and colleague Iris Jamahl Dunkle), I wrote an article for Estuary News about Jack and Charmian's explorations of the bay from 1910-1914.

Read my article in Estuary News here.

* London, Jack, "The Joy of Small-boat Sailing," Country Life in America, August 1, 1912.

Jack's Gold

Jack London climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Oakland Public Library with his mother's library card in hand. He barely weighed a thing, and his curly brown hair was as tussled as the first ten years of his life.

The boy wasn't sure what to expect from the librarian at the top of the stairs. Rules of the library stated that patrons must be at least fourteen to borrow books, and even then you were supposed to have an adult sponsor.

London found the printed catalog of books, and after scouring the titles he selected one and approached the librarian's desk. With eyes downcast he requested the book.

Luckily for London this librarian was no Chimera, no three-headed, fire-breathing monster with goat legs and a snake's tail. She was Ina Coolbrith, a published poet.

 

Coolbrith fetched the book on Pizarro from the closed stacks and brought it back to her desk.
She didn't rebuke him for being too young to check out books. She didn't scold him for having a library card or for coming in without his parents. She didn't lecture him about taking the borrowed book to Lake Merritt or on a tramp in the East Bay hills where the book could get ruined. Instead, she paid him a compliment.

Coolbrith must have seen something of herself in the boy. She had fallen in love with poetry at age eleven when she came to California in 1853. She read Shakespeare and Lord Byron on the Overland Trail from slim volumes taken from her stepfather's law library. She knew the thrill of reading books considered too advanced for children. Her first novel was The Red Revenge, which she read “surreptitiously and chiefly by moonlight.”

Coolbrith stamped the book about the conquistador and told London he had made a fine choice. He would remember the moment for the rest of his life, and told her so twenty years later:

"The old Oakland Library days! Do you know, you were the first one who ever complimented me on my choice of reading matter. Nobody at home bothered their heads over what I read. I was an eager, thirsty, hungry little kid — and one day, at the library, I drew out a volume on Pizzaro in Peru (I was ten years old). You got the book & stamped it for me. And as you handed it to me you praised me for reading books of that nature. Proud! If you only knew how proud your words made me."

The boy took the book home, and soon returned for more. Coolbrith recommended the complete collection of Tobias George Smollet, a Scottish poet and author of picaresque adventure novels. London asked for more and she brought him Horatio Alger and Washington Irving.

Her encouragement wasn't preferential. She didn't know that he would come to pen Call of the Wild or become the first author to earn a million dollars. She encouraged many children who came into the library, including Isadora Duncan and hundreds of less famous young patrons who would come to recognize Ina’s guidance.

For the rest of her life, Coolbrith received notes from strangers who thanked her for helping them at the Oakland Public Library. 

I will be speaking about Jack London and Ina Coolbrith at Jack London State Park on Saturday, August 25, from 2 to 4 pm and at the 2016 Jack London Society Symposium in Napa, CA, September 15-18.

Read the article in Sonoma Index-Tribune.

Photos of Jack London and Ina Coolbrith courtesy of the Oakland Public Library.