Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Early to Mid-September 2018 I’m writing this on Sept. 8, 2018. We’ve had late summer weather during the last two weeks – temperatures in the high 60’s and up to 70 degrees -- with only a few cloudy days and hardly any rain. That wasn’t the case back in 1918. After that magic August 25 th day when Kent met Olson and discovered Fox Island, it started raining and storming. That September Lowell Creek – which flowed down from between Bear and Marathon Mountains into Resurrection Bay – went on a destructive rampage almost as damaging as it had in the fall of 1917. In 1926-27, the town finally contained the creek within a wooden flume. But the flooding continued. Finally, after a 1935 flood damaged much government property owned by the Alaska Railroad, a bill went through congress to divert the stream by drilling a tunnel through Bear Mountain. That work happened during 1939-40, and today L...

The audio of my interview about Rockwell Kent on Alaska Public Radio's Outdoor Explorer  is now  available online at   https://www.alaskapublic.org/category/programs/outdoor-explorer/

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Early Sept., 2018 "How the contemplation of nature as a whole does take the conceit out of us! How we dwindle to mere specks and our little lives to the span of a moment in the presence of the cosmic bodies and the interstellar spaces! How we hurry! How we husband our time. A year, a month, a day, an hour may man so much to us. Behold the infinite leisure of nature."       John Burroughs, "The Gospel of Nature," Century 84 (1912) 195-204. On Sept. 4th 100 years ago Kent wrote to his wife, “ It has rained incessantly… and Olson has not yet ventured to shore” and that weather continued throughout the month according to the old Swede’s journal. Olson did leave for Seward later that day, spent the night and returned the next day. Throughout the winter, Olson would leave off and on – once for several weeks – and Kent would be in charge of the animals, a job he hated....