August 25-27 Part I
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
August 25-27, 2018 – Part I
On Friday, August 24, 2018, I ventured to Fox Island with a film crew for a project about Fox Island, Kent and this centennial year. At the end of the text, just before the photos, you’ll find a link to a video of some drone shots we took.
I was up early and when I looked out my door, Seward was shrouded in a dense fog. The weather this August has been rainy with only a few decent days. We had to cancel shoot once while waiting for a better window. Today was supposed to be it. The forecast, however, said the fog would clear and we’d have a fine day. The producer/director Eric Downs and his sound-man, cinematographer, Josiah Martin arrived in Seward early to catch a sunrise. Instead they did get some eerie footage of the fog. We left for fox Island at 8:30 aboard the Alaskan Explorer, courtesy of Kenai Fjords Tours. They dropped us off at Fox Island then continued on the Northwestern Fiord tour. Note the spelling of “fiord.” Northwestern and McCarty Fiords had already been named before the national park was designated as a National Monument in 1978 -- at which time the spelling of “fjord” was selected – Kenai Fjords National Park in 1980.
Once in the bay – as the fog began to lift with patches of blue sky now visible -- we saw a sea otter playing with a large yellow object. It turned out to be a hard hat some worker had lost. These animals are smarter than you think. I bet that the creature figured, with all the boats in the bay this time of year, it might be safer to wear a hard hat for extra protection. Eventually the fog cleared, most of the clouds disappeared and we had a wonderfully warm and sunny day on Fox Island.
Yesterday – Saturday, August 25, 2018 – was the day that Rockwell Kent met Lars Matt Olson 100 years ago, visited Fox Island, and decided to settle there for the winter. Last evening the Anchorage Museum of History and Art sponsored a dinner cruise to Fox Island where I delivered an illustrated lecture and led some groups to the site of the Kent cabin ruins. We had 108 on board, including several from the media. I’ll notify readers of the coverage as I get the information. It was a mild and pleasant but cloudy day. At least it didn’t rain. Kenai Fjords Tours Captain Steve, driving the Nunatak, took us on the basic route that Kent took on August 25, 1918 with the berry-picking party to Caines Head. The we followed the route I’ll describe below as he ended up meeting Olson and visiting Fox Island.
August 25, 1918 was a Sunday in 1918, one of those magical late summer days in Seward – few clouds in the sky, maybe in the low sixties, flat seas in the morning with a typical breeze and afternoon chop. Jacob Graef’s berry picking party, with Kent and Rocky along, took a sailboat from the Seward beach down the bay to the camp of an Englishman, fisherman George Hogg who was well-known in Seward. Hogg had owned the 14-ton Buffalo, a wooden gas boat. On May 4, 1918, a few months before Kent met him, the Buffalo struck a reef and stranded just north of Cape Resurrection. Hog had left La Touche earlier that day with $400 worth of salted fish. He floated his vessel off the reef onto a shallow beach, but though heavy swells destroyed the boat beyond repair, he was able to save the engine. The Buffalo was valued at $2500-3,000.
Graef’s berry picking party most likely ventured along the west coast of the bay at least as far as Tonsina and maybe all the way to North Beach at the current Caines Head – as we did did aboard the Nunatak a 100 years later. Caines Head is named after E.E. Caine, a Seattle ship captain. He owned several vessels and was in and out of Resurrection Bay often from the late 1990’s through Seward’s early years. John E. Ballaine, who founded the town of Seward in 1903, put him on his board of directors for the Alaska Central Railway he hoped to build to the coal fields north of Ship Creek, now Anchorage. Technically, the headland should be called “Caine’s Head.”
The group’s main goal would be blueberries, but one couldn’t ignore the salmon berries and the low and high bush cranberries, raspberries and various currents. Kent, though, wasn’t after fruit. He borrowed a dory and ventured out into the Bay with his son. Kent’s meeting with Hogg proved to be an important one. The dory Kent borrowed may have been the one he eventually purchased from Graef and would drop off with him for repair. It had two sets of oarlocks, oars and an old, bulky 3.5 hp Evinrude – a commercial engine weighing over 100 pounds. When it cut out – which it often did during the worst moments as Kent was traveling to a from Fox Island – it was too heavy to haul into the dory. With his dory full of supplies, Kent had to row with Rocky with the added weight of that engine dragging at the stern. That’s why he would often leave it in Seward or at Hogg’s camp for repair.
From his description in Wilderness. Kent crossed the bay from his location on the west side toward Humpy Cove to the east. We did the same aboard the Nunatak a 100 years later. A “thick wood coast confronted us” Kent wrote, “and we worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that shore.” Distances at sea can be hard to judge. He and Rockie could make out their destination, but the bay’s immensity discouraged them. “We were becoming disheartened at our seeming slow progress toward a shore that had appeared so near,” Kent wrote. But that was the nature of exploration, Kent realized: “To sail uncharted waters and follow virgin shores – what a life for men!”
They explored Humpy Cove seeking a place to live. Thwaites had told him of an abandoned cabin in the cove. Later that winter Kent would revisit the cove. ““At Humpy Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high,” he wrote, “perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round basin. The falls to-day {that winter} were frozen and spread wide over the face of the cliff; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form.” On that August afternoon, the area looked promising. Suddenly, Kent saw an old man alone in small motor-driven dory coming their way – “Father Neptune himself and lord of all that sea and land domain.” It was Lars Matt Olson on his way back to Fox Island after gathering pink, also called Humpy or Humpback salmon from a nearby creek for fox feed. They signaled and pulled up beside each other, Olson grinning widely. Kent told the Swede what he was looking for – a place to live and paint for the winter. Could the old man suggest a place?
“Come with me,” Olson said with enthusiasm. “I have it. Pass a line to me. I’ll take your boat in tow. Come and I show you the place to live.” It was probably late afternoon that August day, for Olson pointed “straight in the path of the sun” where Kent could see “the huge, dark mountain mass of an island.” The old man took them in tow as they headed west. Olson didn’t say a word and the Kents wondered where they were going. Once out of Humpy Cove they skirted the northern headland of Fox Island. It was all cliffs with no beach. Kent must have wondered how one could possible settle on Fox Island. And then suddenly, as they began to come around the headland the distant shore of a beach gradually came into view. That evening a 100 years later, Capt. Steven pulled in close as we entered the cove, and brought us along shore where the fox farm had been located.
“What a scene!” Kent wrote. “Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance…A clean smooth, dark-pebbled beach with all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest.” From a distance the scale was so huge, that they mistook the fox farm buildings for boulders. Once their dories grounded, they leapt to shore. “It isn’t possible. It isn’t real,” Kent whispered.
They hauled the boats up the beach using Olson’s windlass then, “striding up the steep-sloped, pebbly beach we found ourselves in – I have named it as our cherished hope – in Paradise.” Could this be the mythical Hildagarden in reality – the paradise he had created in his handmade fairytale book for Hildegarde, The Jewel? Could this be Latitude 60 degrees North – “forested by the tall straight Alaska spruce rather than by cocoanut and bread-fruit trees…little more than four hundred miles from the Arctic Circle?”
Those of us who have lived long enough along the Alaska coast cherish days like the one Kent had that August 25, 1918. We live through the rain, snow and wind, accept the choppy rolling seas -- learning even cherish them – but we look forward to the sun and its warmth. With climate change so visible in Alaska -- the glaciers are melting, the boreal forests are transforming, villages along Bering and Chukchi Sea are disappearing due to sea level rise, and the permafrost is melting. Even in 1918 the Seward newspaper and chamber of commerce occasionally noted how mild the weather was along our maritime climate zone as we were slowly emerging from the Little Ice Age. But when Kent talks about Fox Island sitting – “little more” that 400 miles from the Arctic Circle, I smile. You’ll sometimes find that quote in early reviews and promotional material for his Alaska book. It does make his adventure seem more dramatic. There are many climate zones in Alaska. It’s frustrating when tourists ask us what they should wear when they visit the 49th state. You’ll often hear us tell them to dress in layers so you can build up or take off as needed. The weather along the Gulf of Alaska is a different world from the one more than 400 miles north at the Arctic Circle. There’s no comparison. In February in Seward we may have rain and 40 degree temperatures. Just a few miles north on the Seward Highway it might be ten below zero. Thirty miles north at Moose Pass it could be thirty below. What’s the weather like in Alaska? What part of Alaska are we talking about?
Even on the day Kent found Fox Island, the weather can change quickly. Spectacular calm, sunny days aside, whenever I head out into Resurrection Bay on a boat, I always bring rain gear – at least my rain pants. I strap them on my backpack even on a sunny day with no clouds in the sky. It’s a habit. Something deep down tells me if I don’t, the weather and seas will suddenly turn. It rarely does – but having the right gear just makes me feel better. Olson tried to tell Kent about winter’s north wind, the rough seas and the dangers. At first Kent laughed at Olson's advice. He did eventually learn – the hard way.
Here's the link to the drone footage from our Aug. 24 shoot on Fox Island:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUWuN-2FWIc&feature=youtu.be
PHOTOS
Mountain-top view of Fox Island and the entrance to Resurrection Bay taken by The Rev. Louis H. Pedersen circa 1908. You clearly see Caines Head in the foreground, Fox Island with Kent’s cove on the left and Sunny Cove on the right, and at center right Hive Island and the tip of Rugged Island. A Methodist Minister, Pedersen came to Seward with his family in 1905 and left in 1911. He was also a talented photographer and sold postcards of scenes like this one. Capra collection.
By 1918 when Kent was in Alaska, the sea otter population had been depleted by hunters and they were thought to be extinct. Today they are plentiful in Resurrection Bay but there were probably none in 1918. This little fellow haunted the dock at Fox Island for a few seasons several years ago, delighting the tourists as they arrived and left on the Kenai Fjords Tours boats. Capra photo.
It was probably late afternoon on August 25, 1918, for Olson pointed “straight in the path of the sun” where Kent could see “the huge, dark mountain mass of an island.” I took this photo on August 24, 2018 on the Fox Island beach. This is where the sun would have been at about the time Kent, Rocky and Olson arrived on Fox Island a 100 years earlier. Capra photo.
This is one of only two photos I have located of Kent’s dory. Noticed the engine in the stern. Kent would often leave it with Hogg or in Seward for repairs. Kent sometimes used a tripod to take pictures like this, but I think it’s out of focus because he had Olson take it. Rockwell Kent Gallery at Plattsburgh State University at Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Some scenes of Humpy Cove, courtesy of Scott Bemman. Kent may have used one of these waterfalls for his Frozen Falls painting. Here’s a family of river otters. Although sea otters were not around when Kent was on Fox Island, river otters were and are plentiful. I’m always running into these creatures as they climb up the beach with a fish in their mouth and head down the trail from Olson’s cabin site to the lake.
As Olson towed Kent and Rockie in their skiff toward Fox Island, this is the scene they would have had of the island’s northern headland. In the distance you can see the beach appearing, but at first Kent could see only sheer cliffs and may have wondered how they could possibly settle there. Capra photo.
Then the beach opened up before them. “What a scene!” Kent wrote. “Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance…A clean smooth, dark-pebbled beach with all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest.” From a distance the scale was so huge, that they mistook the fox farm buildings for boulders. Once their dories grounded, they leapt to shore. “It isn’t possible. It isn’t real,” Kent whispered. Capra photo.
They hauled the boats up the beach using Olson’s windlass then, “striding up the steep-sloped, pebbly beach we found ourselves in – I have named it as our cherished hope – in Paradise.” Pen and in sketch of “The Windlass” from “Wilderness.”
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
August 25-27, 2018 – Part I
On Friday, August 24, 2018, I ventured to Fox Island with a film crew for a project about Fox Island, Kent and this centennial year. At the end of the text, just before the photos, you’ll find a link to a video of some drone shots we took.
I was up early and when I looked out my door, Seward was shrouded in a dense fog. The weather this August has been rainy with only a few decent days. We had to cancel shoot once while waiting for a better window. Today was supposed to be it. The forecast, however, said the fog would clear and we’d have a fine day. The producer/director Eric Downs and his sound-man, cinematographer, Josiah Martin arrived in Seward early to catch a sunrise. Instead they did get some eerie footage of the fog. We left for fox Island at 8:30 aboard the Alaskan Explorer, courtesy of Kenai Fjords Tours. They dropped us off at Fox Island then continued on the Northwestern Fiord tour. Note the spelling of “fiord.” Northwestern and McCarty Fiords had already been named before the national park was designated as a National Monument in 1978 -- at which time the spelling of “fjord” was selected – Kenai Fjords National Park in 1980.
Once in the bay – as the fog began to lift with patches of blue sky now visible -- we saw a sea otter playing with a large yellow object. It turned out to be a hard hat some worker had lost. These animals are smarter than you think. I bet that the creature figured, with all the boats in the bay this time of year, it might be safer to wear a hard hat for extra protection. Eventually the fog cleared, most of the clouds disappeared and we had a wonderfully warm and sunny day on Fox Island.
Yesterday – Saturday, August 25, 2018 – was the day that Rockwell Kent met Lars Matt Olson 100 years ago, visited Fox Island, and decided to settle there for the winter. Last evening the Anchorage Museum of History and Art sponsored a dinner cruise to Fox Island where I delivered an illustrated lecture and led some groups to the site of the Kent cabin ruins. We had 108 on board, including several from the media. I’ll notify readers of the coverage as I get the information. It was a mild and pleasant but cloudy day. At least it didn’t rain. Kenai Fjords Tours Captain Steve, driving the Nunatak, took us on the basic route that Kent took on August 25, 1918 with the berry-picking party to Caines Head. The we followed the route I’ll describe below as he ended up meeting Olson and visiting Fox Island.
August 25, 1918 was a Sunday in 1918, one of those magical late summer days in Seward – few clouds in the sky, maybe in the low sixties, flat seas in the morning with a typical breeze and afternoon chop. Jacob Graef’s berry picking party, with Kent and Rocky along, took a sailboat from the Seward beach down the bay to the camp of an Englishman, fisherman George Hogg who was well-known in Seward. Hogg had owned the 14-ton Buffalo, a wooden gas boat. On May 4, 1918, a few months before Kent met him, the Buffalo struck a reef and stranded just north of Cape Resurrection. Hog had left La Touche earlier that day with $400 worth of salted fish. He floated his vessel off the reef onto a shallow beach, but though heavy swells destroyed the boat beyond repair, he was able to save the engine. The Buffalo was valued at $2500-3,000.
Graef’s berry picking party most likely ventured along the west coast of the bay at least as far as Tonsina and maybe all the way to North Beach at the current Caines Head – as we did did aboard the Nunatak a 100 years later. Caines Head is named after E.E. Caine, a Seattle ship captain. He owned several vessels and was in and out of Resurrection Bay often from the late 1990’s through Seward’s early years. John E. Ballaine, who founded the town of Seward in 1903, put him on his board of directors for the Alaska Central Railway he hoped to build to the coal fields north of Ship Creek, now Anchorage. Technically, the headland should be called “Caine’s Head.”
The group’s main goal would be blueberries, but one couldn’t ignore the salmon berries and the low and high bush cranberries, raspberries and various currents. Kent, though, wasn’t after fruit. He borrowed a dory and ventured out into the Bay with his son. Kent’s meeting with Hogg proved to be an important one. The dory Kent borrowed may have been the one he eventually purchased from Graef and would drop off with him for repair. It had two sets of oarlocks, oars and an old, bulky 3.5 hp Evinrude – a commercial engine weighing over 100 pounds. When it cut out – which it often did during the worst moments as Kent was traveling to a from Fox Island – it was too heavy to haul into the dory. With his dory full of supplies, Kent had to row with Rocky with the added weight of that engine dragging at the stern. That’s why he would often leave it in Seward or at Hogg’s camp for repair.
From his description in Wilderness. Kent crossed the bay from his location on the west side toward Humpy Cove to the east. We did the same aboard the Nunatak a 100 years later. A “thick wood coast confronted us” Kent wrote, “and we worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that shore.” Distances at sea can be hard to judge. He and Rockie could make out their destination, but the bay’s immensity discouraged them. “We were becoming disheartened at our seeming slow progress toward a shore that had appeared so near,” Kent wrote. But that was the nature of exploration, Kent realized: “To sail uncharted waters and follow virgin shores – what a life for men!”
They explored Humpy Cove seeking a place to live. Thwaites had told him of an abandoned cabin in the cove. Later that winter Kent would revisit the cove. ““At Humpy Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high,” he wrote, “perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round basin. The falls to-day {that winter} were frozen and spread wide over the face of the cliff; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form.” On that August afternoon, the area looked promising. Suddenly, Kent saw an old man alone in small motor-driven dory coming their way – “Father Neptune himself and lord of all that sea and land domain.” It was Lars Matt Olson on his way back to Fox Island after gathering pink, also called Humpy or Humpback salmon from a nearby creek for fox feed. They signaled and pulled up beside each other, Olson grinning widely. Kent told the Swede what he was looking for – a place to live and paint for the winter. Could the old man suggest a place?
“Come with me,” Olson said with enthusiasm. “I have it. Pass a line to me. I’ll take your boat in tow. Come and I show you the place to live.” It was probably late afternoon that August day, for Olson pointed “straight in the path of the sun” where Kent could see “the huge, dark mountain mass of an island.” The old man took them in tow as they headed west. Olson didn’t say a word and the Kents wondered where they were going. Once out of Humpy Cove they skirted the northern headland of Fox Island. It was all cliffs with no beach. Kent must have wondered how one could possible settle on Fox Island. And then suddenly, as they began to come around the headland the distant shore of a beach gradually came into view. That evening a 100 years later, Capt. Steven pulled in close as we entered the cove, and brought us along shore where the fox farm had been located.
“What a scene!” Kent wrote. “Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance…A clean smooth, dark-pebbled beach with all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest.” From a distance the scale was so huge, that they mistook the fox farm buildings for boulders. Once their dories grounded, they leapt to shore. “It isn’t possible. It isn’t real,” Kent whispered.
They hauled the boats up the beach using Olson’s windlass then, “striding up the steep-sloped, pebbly beach we found ourselves in – I have named it as our cherished hope – in Paradise.” Could this be the mythical Hildagarden in reality – the paradise he had created in his handmade fairytale book for Hildegarde, The Jewel? Could this be Latitude 60 degrees North – “forested by the tall straight Alaska spruce rather than by cocoanut and bread-fruit trees…little more than four hundred miles from the Arctic Circle?”
Those of us who have lived long enough along the Alaska coast cherish days like the one Kent had that August 25, 1918. We live through the rain, snow and wind, accept the choppy rolling seas -- learning even cherish them – but we look forward to the sun and its warmth. With climate change so visible in Alaska -- the glaciers are melting, the boreal forests are transforming, villages along Bering and Chukchi Sea are disappearing due to sea level rise, and the permafrost is melting. Even in 1918 the Seward newspaper and chamber of commerce occasionally noted how mild the weather was along our maritime climate zone as we were slowly emerging from the Little Ice Age. But when Kent talks about Fox Island sitting – “little more” that 400 miles from the Arctic Circle, I smile. You’ll sometimes find that quote in early reviews and promotional material for his Alaska book. It does make his adventure seem more dramatic. There are many climate zones in Alaska. It’s frustrating when tourists ask us what they should wear when they visit the 49th state. You’ll often hear us tell them to dress in layers so you can build up or take off as needed. The weather along the Gulf of Alaska is a different world from the one more than 400 miles north at the Arctic Circle. There’s no comparison. In February in Seward we may have rain and 40 degree temperatures. Just a few miles north on the Seward Highway it might be ten below zero. Thirty miles north at Moose Pass it could be thirty below. What’s the weather like in Alaska? What part of Alaska are we talking about?
Even on the day Kent found Fox Island, the weather can change quickly. Spectacular calm, sunny days aside, whenever I head out into Resurrection Bay on a boat, I always bring rain gear – at least my rain pants. I strap them on my backpack even on a sunny day with no clouds in the sky. It’s a habit. Something deep down tells me if I don’t, the weather and seas will suddenly turn. It rarely does – but having the right gear just makes me feel better. Olson tried to tell Kent about winter’s north wind, the rough seas and the dangers. At first Kent laughed at Olson's advice. He did eventually learn – the hard way.
Here's the link to the drone footage from our Aug. 24 shoot on Fox Island:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUWuN-2FWIc&feature=youtu.be
PHOTOS
Mountain-top view of Fox Island and the entrance to Resurrection Bay taken by The Rev. Louis H. Pedersen circa 1908. You clearly see Caines Head in the foreground, Fox Island with Kent’s cove on the left and Sunny Cove on the right, and at center right Hive Island and the tip of Rugged Island. A Methodist Minister, Pedersen came to Seward with his family in 1905 and left in 1911. He was also a talented photographer and sold postcards of scenes like this one. Capra collection.
By 1918 when Kent was in Alaska, the sea otter population had been depleted by hunters and they were thought to be extinct. Today they are plentiful in Resurrection Bay but there were probably none in 1918. This little fellow haunted the dock at Fox Island for a few seasons several years ago, delighting the tourists as they arrived and left on the Kenai Fjords Tours boats. Capra photo.
It was probably late afternoon on August 25, 1918, for Olson pointed “straight in the path of the sun” where Kent could see “the huge, dark mountain mass of an island.” I took this photo on August 24, 2018 on the Fox Island beach. This is where the sun would have been at about the time Kent, Rocky and Olson arrived on Fox Island a 100 years earlier. Capra photo.
This is one of only two photos I have located of Kent’s dory. Noticed the engine in the stern. Kent would often leave it with Hogg or in Seward for repairs. Kent sometimes used a tripod to take pictures like this, but I think it’s out of focus because he had Olson take it. Rockwell Kent Gallery at Plattsburgh State University at Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Some scenes of Humpy Cove, courtesy of Scott Bemman. Kent may have used one of these waterfalls for his Frozen Falls painting. Here’s a family of river otters. Although sea otters were not around when Kent was on Fox Island, river otters were and are plentiful. I’m always running into these creatures as they climb up the beach with a fish in their mouth and head down the trail from Olson’s cabin site to the lake.
As Olson towed Kent and Rockie in their skiff toward Fox Island, this is the scene they would have had of the island’s northern headland. In the distance you can see the beach appearing, but at first Kent could see only sheer cliffs and may have wondered how they could possibly settle there. Capra photo.
Then the beach opened up before them. “What a scene!” Kent wrote. “Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance…A clean smooth, dark-pebbled beach with all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest.” From a distance the scale was so huge, that they mistook the fox farm buildings for boulders. Once their dories grounded, they leapt to shore. “It isn’t possible. It isn’t real,” Kent whispered. Capra photo.
They hauled the boats up the beach using Olson’s windlass then, “striding up the steep-sloped, pebbly beach we found ourselves in – I have named it as our cherished hope – in Paradise.” Pen and in sketch of “The Windlass” from “Wilderness.”
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