Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Early to Mid-Oct., 2018 – Part 2 (Unless otherwise noted, all Kent letter quotes and images are from the online Archives of American Art Rockwell Kent Papers. Quotes from Carl Zigrosser's letters are courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.) As we look back to Fox Island 100 years ago – Oct. 13, 1918 – we find Kent and Rockie packed and ready to venture to Seward. The rain has stopped and Kent calls it a “wonderfully beautiful day” but “with a ranging northwest wind.” Power, strength, force, youth, vitality, energy – life itself – that northwest wind. Although it prevented him from heading to Seward – perhaps because it had the authority to do so – Kent admired its audacity. “I must sometime honor the northwest wind in a great picture,” he wrote, “as the embodiment of clean, strong, exuberant life, the joy of every young thing, bearing energy on its wing and the will to triu