GETTING TO KNOW JOAQUIN MILLER

 

While at the Joaquin Miller Park for the State Picnic on July 23rd, we were also given a history lesson about Joaquin, the Park and our CWC connection to it. It turns out that some of the very first meetings of the California Writers Club happened on this very plot of land in the Oakland foothills. Cincinnatus Hiner ("Joaquin") Miller, who was born in Indiana in 1841 and during his lifetime was a pony-express rider, lawyer, judge, teacher, gold prospector, nomad and author, also made a trip to the Bay Area in 1870. It was at that time he met California's first Poet Laureate and Oakland's first librarian, Ina Coolbrith. Coolbrith convinced him to take the colorful pen name of Joaquin Miller. (The same woman also encouraged Jack London to write, and write he did. The most prestigious award given by the State CWC is the Ina Coolbrith award in her honor.) Joaquin later became well known as the "Poet of the Sierras" and was the author of the poem, "Sail on," which became one of the California Writers Club mottos and was one of the few poems foisted on early California fourth-graders to memorize in the state schools.

When Joaquin returned to Oakland in 1886, he settled on 70 acres of grassy hillside, which he had purchased parcel-by-parcel in the hills above the "City of the Oaks." In an effort to create an inspirational artists' retreat, he erected monuments, built structures for his mother and daughter, and coordinated the planting of 75,000 trees -- Monterey cypress, olive and eucalyptus. He died in his home in 1913. Later, during the 1930s, and with the help of the CCC and California Writers Club members, a special "walk" was created on the hillsides in honor of "all California writers."

 

For some of us, the trek up into those beautifully shaded groves was difficult, with steep slopes, trails riven with gnarled tree stumps and the heat radiating off the upper hills. But it all was worth the effort to have visited this most historic of physical sites in celebration of our own California Writers Club.      

 

P.S. Next year, the picnic will be held closer to the flat open space and will be much more member-friendly.