August 24, 2018 Part I

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018

August 24, 2018

100 years ago -- Kent and Rockie arrive in Seward aboard the Admiral Farragut. They probably had made brief stops at Cordova, and later Valdez in Prince William Sound. As they crossed the Gulf of Alaska, Kent and Rocky stood on deck and viewed the scenery. It was late in the season, but it still stayed light enough for them to see the coastal mountain ranges and the blows and tails of some Pacific Humpback Whales. Most of the Humpbacks would soon begin their long migration to Hawaiian waters to mate and give birth – but those between breeding seasons and some too young or too old stayed the winter. The Kents may have seen the dorsal fins of killer whales or Dall’s Porpoise. In those open waters, sooty shearwaters flap, flap glided inside and out of the wave troughs, and black-legged kittiwakes may have followed the ship.

On their way to Seward the Kents saw real wilderness as they traveled along the coasts of the two largest national forests in the U.S. The Tongess National Forest is the size of West Virginia (17 million acres)) and stretches along the Inside Passage. From Yakutat to Seward they experienced the Chugach National Forest which is the size of New Hampshire (nearly 7 million acres) with only 90 miles of Forest Service roads and 500 miles of trails. Thirty percent of it is covered with ice, including the Sargent Icefield with its 20 tidewater glaciers including Ellsworth Glacier, 16 miles long. Both were established in 1907. Kent had seen wilderness before in Newfoundland, but this was different in its expanse and size alone. Perhaps he wondered how he could ever capture this essence on canvass.

Kent talked with old timers along the way and met Conrad Birkhofer, a man who for many years had spent a month every summer hiking unarmed in Alaska’s wilds. He knew the territory. Kent told him why he was in Alaska and where he wanted to settle. Why go to Seldovia? Birkhofer challenged Kent. You can find just what you’re looking for at Resurrection Bay.

As the vessel sailed past Day Harbor, the father and son may have noticed Ellsworth Glacier to the north emerging from the Sargent Icefield in the Chugach National Forest. Soon Bear Glacier came into view dead ahead, just around the corner of what today is called Callisto Head. In 1918 it was still part of Caines Head as Kent labels it on the chart he drew of Resurrection Bay. Bear Glacier is one of many outlet glaciers that flow down from the Harding Icefield, the largest in Kenai Fjords National Park.

As they passed Cape Resurrection, Steller sea lions roared on the rocks, perhaps a coastal mountain goat grazed precariously high upon the cliffs, and the last of the great flocks of black-legged Kittiwakes swarmed nearby. Though it was late in the season and the outward migration had begun, they may have seen some stray Horned or Tufted Puffins or Common Murres on the water – but most of those pelagic birds had left their nests and already headed a few hundred miles out to sea where they would spend the winter. The Admiral Farragut sailed between Rugged Island to the south and Hive Island to the north into Resurrection Bay.

Five years later, in July 1923, Seward would name that passageway the Harding Gateway after President Warren G. Harding’s visit to Alaska to drive in the golden spike at Nenana connecting the steel symbolizing the completion of the Alaska Railroad running over 400 miles from Seward to Fairbanks. The town would also name the large icefield from which the Bear Glacier flowed, the Harding Icefield. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter would withdraw much of that icefield and its outlet glaciers under the Antiquities Act to create Kenai Fjords National Monument to the east and the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge to the west. Two years later, under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), the U.S. Congress Kenai Fjords National Monument would become Kenai Fjords National Park.

There are often chops or swells in the Gulf of Alaska, even on the best of days, but once on the west side of what locals call Resurrection Bay’s barrier islands – Barwell, Rugged, Hive, Fox, and Hat – the waters become calm. Rockwell and his son most likely noticed the difference. Someone may have pointed out Fox Island to the west, the largest in the bay. The two coves on that side would be clearly visible – Sunny Cove to the south, and Northwest Harbor to the north. Kent may even have been able to make out the fox farm buildings on the northern edge of Northwest Harbor. The scenery mesmerized him and he recalled Birkhofer’s counsel. “Confirming his advice by the evidence of my own eyes as we steamed up the deep fjord which is Resurrection Bay,” he wrote in his 1955 autobiography, “we left the ship at Seward.”

As I imagine the Kents arriving in Resurrection Bay 100 years ago, I go back in time myself.

It’s a spectacular June evening near the solstice almost twenty years ago. I’m a ranger at Kenai Fjords National Park doing the narration aboard a tour boat in Resurrection Bay. It’s almost 9 p.m., but the sun is still visible high above the Aialik Peninsula to the west. We’ve already explored the east side of the bay, past the Sitka spruce and alder of the temperate rain forest, noticing several perching Bald Eagles. We enter Thumb Cove with the cirque glaciers, Prospect, Spoon and Porcupine. I always step out onto the bow rather than observe from their inside tables. As the blue ice comes into view I sense the wonder of passengers viewing beside me. Their amazement is vocalized briefly – something like a collective ooh or ahh. Then the silence of reverence. An elderly couple hold each other closely. I later learn they’re in their eighties and today is their sixtieth anniversary.

We visited Humpy Cove. This is where Olson gathered his pink or humpy salmon for fox food. This is also where Kent and Rocky first met the old Swede. We motor up to a cliff of pillow basalt with water trickling down its face. We play the old trick – suggesting people move to the front of the bow to get their picture taken. Some do, but they don’t realize how close we’ll get – maybe only a foot from the rocks – so they get wet. The water is almost a hundred feet deep here. We remind visitors that fjords like Resurrection Bay are U-shaped and how deep the water can be right up against the cliffs. The elderly couple remained a safe distance back from the drips, proving the experience of age has its benefits. A lone Steller sea lion swims by, disturbing a pair of Marbled Murrelets who dive for cover. A harbor seal pops its head up out of the water fifty yards behind us as we leave, then gradually sinks as if in slow motion. I notice an immature bald eagle perched nearby but I don’t announce it. He blends so well into the Spruce and Mountain Hemlock forest that you can barely see him.

We head west out of the cove past a high stand of mountain hemlocks and turn south past Hat Island with the Fox Island Spit in the distance – an old glacial moraine. Beyond is the El Dorado Narrows, Cape Resurrection and the Gulf of Alaska – open ocean. In calm seas, Kent most likely circled Fox Island in his small dory and motored (or rowed) north out of his cove, rounding the northern headland, wandering along north of the spit and then turning south into the El Dorado Narrows.

Once into the narrows we often begin to feel what’s called the “motion of the ocean.” Even on days when the bay is calm we can experience gentle but steep rollers – perhaps remnants of a storm far out at sea. If it wasn’t for this wave action, we wouldn’t see all the wildlife along the coast – for this is the point when our trip gets interesting. As we move past the Fox Island spit, we can view an eagle’s nest and perhaps one of the adults in it. Otherwise the mated pair might be perched on a nearby snag. It’s mid-June for us. Kent and Rocky would have viewed an abandoned nest for the newly hatched eagles had fledged by then. Just like us, though, the two travelers would have marveled at the ghost forests of dead spruce trees. During the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, the land along the coast of this part of Alaska dropped six to eight feet. Salt water flooded the roots systems of these trees and killed them, but the salt acted as a preservative and they stand along our coast today as reminders of what life is like where two tectonic plates meet. 

We pass Pillow Rock with its rounded basalt stones and boulders, close enough to get a perfect view of the Double-Crested and Pelagic Cormorants perched there. Beneath us is a fault line separating the igneous basalt on the east side of the Resurrection Peninsula from the metasedimentary rock along the west side of Fox Island. The basalt was formed on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in ocean-spreading centers. Hot magma rose up from hot spots and as it flowed into the water it solidified into round pillow-like rocks. The Pacific tectonic plate carried that section of ocean floor north and as it plowed into the North American plate, what is now the Resurrection Peninsula rose up.

I’m on the bow describing all of this to the passengers. Up ahead, I tell them, we’ll soon encounter so much activity that it will be difficult for me to describe it all at once without disturbing the experience. I’ll give them a heads up so they can enjoy it on their own. It happens all at once – the possibility of puffins, murres, murrelets, pigeon guillemots, black-legged kittiwakes, eagles, cormorants, and maybe a peregrine falcon -- all at once. Those are just the birds. We will also see Steller sea lions, maybe seals, sea otters, mountain goats and possibly a black bear along the coast. Occasionally even a feeding Humpback shows up, or if we really fortunate, a pod of Orca.

It’s one of those special late summer evenings on Resurrection Bay, so warm that I wander the outer decks in my short-sleeved shirt – no jacket, fleece or gloves. The sun is hot. I’m on the bow standing beside the elderly couple as the vessel stops by the Steller sea lion haul-out for a closer look. The two are holding hands and the woman smiles at me. We can smell the sea lions and hear them growl. “I never in my life thought we’d ever experience a place like this,” she says to me.

I could tell her that the waves and currents crashing into these coasts bring with them all the nutrients that have sunk to the ocean bottom and that we call this process upwelling. But we’ve journeyed beyond the facts. I’ll narrate this after we’ve moved on. These nutrients combined with the minerals carried by rivers into estuaries like Resurrection Bay become food for the plankton which is the base of the food chain. Cold water has much oxygen. That – mixed with the nutrients and combined with the nearly twenty hours of daylight we get in summer – allows photosynthesis and rhe plankton population along the Alaska coast explodes.

The Kents, of course, didn’t see all of this as they sailed into Resurrection Bay, but they saw plenty – enough to experience, to feel, to internalize the magic. More important, they saw islands – and one in particular. It was the larger of the five and had two stunning coves on the west side. Perfect places to settle. If they had looked closer, they might have detected a small fox farm and goat ranch on the northern end of the northern most cove. Even if they missed the site, it must have seemed clear to Kent that he had to get out in a small boat and explore the bay for a place to settle.

PHOTOS

1.     Steller Sea Lions haul-out on a rock in the El Dorado Narrows on the east side of Fox Island. Capra photo.

2.     If Kent had motored past Bear Glacier and a little to the southwest, he would have wondered at the beauty of Spire Cove. Capra photo.

3.     Kent could only see a sliver of Bear Glacier from his cabin site. He did go to Sunny Cove to the south to get a better view, and may have even ventured further south during calm seas. The beach and the forest in front of the glacier sits on an old recessional moraine. A deep lake filled with ice bergs is now behind the forest. Capra photo

4.     Kent never got to the Bear Glacier beach or the lake. If he had, we would have known for he would have written about it. Capra photo

5.     Kent does describe the sound of the Humpback Whales slapping their large pectoral fins in the Fox Island Cove. He and Rocky also observed the Orca that sometimes visit the island to rub their bellies on the beach. These Humpbacks are feeding – what we call bubble netting. A group will dive down and together circle around a school of small fish while blowing bubbles that trap them. As the fish rise to the surface to escape the Humpbacks follow them up with their mouths open to feed. Courtesy photo.

6.     Most of the puffins were gone by the time the Kent arrived in Resurrection. These Horned Puffins are sitting outside their nests. If Kent saw any puffins they were probably on the water getting ready to migrate out to sea where they spend the winter. Capra photo

7.     A lone Sitka Spruce struggles to survive on the cliffs of Resurrection Bay. Scenes like this filled Kent with awe and inspired his work. Capra Photo.

8.     As the Admiral Farragut steamed into Resurrection Bay, and as the Kents looked off to their right (the east), this is the view they would have had of Fox Island. Capra photo.