Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Kent and Rocky quickly settled in to their life at Yakutat, although more and more it appeared to Kent that this was not the place for what he sought in Alaska. In later years, Rocky wrote little of the train and steamer trip, not that it wasn’t exciting. It just wasn’t as eventful as his stay at Yakutat. “We lived with the fishermen,” Rocky wrote in the Fall 2014 issue of The Kent Collector, “sleeping in bunks in the dormitory. Father was unhappy, grumbling to me about his bunk and grumbling to all about the food. He was especially contemptuous of a fellow boarder who covered his oatmeal with a quarter of an inch of sugar and added enough more to his coffee to make syrup. He told me that a man’s stupidity can be judged by the quantity of sugar he uses. Father’s unhappiness reached a zenith when he discovered that the gentleman in the neighboring bunk was pouring our tooth powder in his boots to hel...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Friday night, August 10, 2018 – An event happened in Resurrection Bay worth noting in this Kent journal. Kent’s cabin was located at the northern cove on the west side of Fox island – at the northern end of that cove. West across the bay and a little to the south sits Bear Glacier around the corner of what today is named Callisto Head. Kent labels in Caines Head on his pen-and-ink chart of Resurrection Bay because it didn’t get the current name until 1930. On a clear day from his cabin, Kent could probably see a sliver of Bear Glacier’s snout. If he hiked to the southern end of his cove, which he and Rocky often did, he could see a bit more. If he ventured around that headland to Sunny Cove, Kent could get an even better view. He could see it best when he took his small dory out of his cove and risked heading a bit south – potentially dangerous in winter. The artist was fascinated with Bear Glacier...

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 can’t face the thought of the loneliness I’m going into…Can you come to Alaska with me?...Never did I enter upon any course with such a sense of necessity, of duty, as drives me into this Alaska trip.” Rockwell Kent in letters to his wife, Kathleen 100 YEARS AGO While aboard the Admiral Schley Kent wrote some letters, perhaps while in the ship’s salon where a picture of a “forgetful looking person” reminded him of that duty. “Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days imaginable,” he wrote to his friend, Carl Zigrosser, “ever so clear, so that the distant Rocky Mountains or the Cascade Range was visible. The islands fascinated him and the mountains were “most romantic and alluring with canyon and forest.” Rocky played on deck for hours by himself while Kent viewed the scenery and played his flute. It would be difficult work creating a home place in the Alaska wilderness, and Rocky wou...

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...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “Above every other thought now is the sad realization that our days on this beloved Island are nearing an end. What is it that endears it so to a man nearly forty and a little boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. It may be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning backward from the crowded world that I have known and learned to fear, meet Rockwell in his forward march from nothing – to this…It seems that we have both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES – for the wilderness is nothing else.” Rockwell Kent in “Wilderness” for Wednesday, February 19, 1919. The above quote contains the title of my book-in-progress. While the artist and his son are heading toward Vancouver, British Columbia on the Canadian Pacif...