Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 While Rockwell and Rockie are still in Yakutat, I’ll backtrack a bit. Notice how I spelled his son’s name. While reading through the letters I’ve noticed that Kent spells it both with a “y” and an “ie.” His wife, Kathleen, spells it Rockie. So far I’ve been quoting mostly from his letters to Hildegarde Hirsch. Those letters will run through 1919 as Kent is on Fox Island, and a bit further. As I’ve said, Hildegarde’s letters to Kent have not survived, so we can only surmise from his letters how she may be responding.  It may appear from what I’ve written so far that Kent is only writing to Hildegarde. That’s not the case. He is sending Kathleen and his children many letters and postcards from the train and the ship. By Aug. 19, 1918 Kathleen has received a letter from Yakutat and writes him there from Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where she and the three girls are living. He doesn’t ...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 I woke up this morning – August 11, 2018 – made my coffee, had some breakfast, and watched the news. A hundred years ago at the same time Kent and Rocky were aboard the Admiral Schley anticipating their arrival later today in Yakutat.  Kent wrote letters to pass the time. Those to Hildegarde are descriptive and revealing. By the evening of August 5th the two travelers were in Petersburg where Kent sent off a few posts. During the next days at sea Kent sat on the upper deck “writing and reading and blowing my flute.” The passing scenery amazed him, especially the mountains with their sides “cloaked in dark spruce forests while their peaks, bare of trees, patched with snow, are up in the clouds.” The weather had been clear and warm, but after Petersburg it started to rain. “I think we’ll not find an intense cold on this coast,” Kent wrote, “and rain through the winter rather than snow.” His foreca...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 "I crave snow-topped mountains, dreary wastes, and the cruel Northern sea with it's hard horizons at the edge of the world where infinite space begins. Here skies are clearer and deeper and, for the greater wonders they reveal, a thousand times more eloquent of the eternal mystery than those of softer lands. I love this Northern nature, and I what love I must possess.” Letter to Dr. Christian Brinton in "Wilderness," p. xxxi Kent and his son overnighted in Seattle on Aug. 2, 1918. Rocky wasn't feeling too well, it was raining, and Kent wasn't impressed with the city. He wrote another long letter to Hildegarde:  "Rockie {sic} is here in the room with me, in bed, recovering from a little upset he has had. I must nurse him quietly back into shape for tomorrow night we start for the north. I’m under the weather, too just so much irregularity. Well my Sweetheart, there...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 On August 1st 100 years ago Kent and Rocky rose early aboard the train. By 7:30 they were all dressed up and waiting to arrive in Vancouver for breakfast. "There we shall take the first steamer we can and go north to Skagway where we’ll probably change to another. But this is all guess work." That wasn't to be the case. Kent liked to travel with little planning. From his letters, it's clear that he rarely knew precisely what would happen next.  He wrote many letters on the train -- to his mother, to his wife Kathleen, to Carl Zigrosser, and especially to his lover back in New York, Hildegarde Hirsch. Kent's tiny handwriting script is difficult to read normally, but all the bumps and jolts on the train, which he noted, makes it all the more difficult. At this point he'd given up on getting his wife to join him in Alaska, so he turned that effort toward Hildegarde. "Wha...