MID TO LATE SEPTEMBER 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

Mid to Late September 2018

As I write this on Sept. 14, 2018 – on this day 100 years ago Rockwell and Rockie are tired of the rain. In Seward today, we’re experiencing perhaps the last day of weeks of sunny weather and temperatures in the high 60's and mid-70’s. All that is supposed change tomorrow with rain and more normal temperatures for this time of year We’ll see. It’s been a delightful run, but from experience we know that October can bring rains with flooding and/or snow.

Meanwhile, this week a 100 years ago, Kent and Rockie are working hard on Fox Island to clear the land, make the goat shed livable, and gather a winter wood supply. They’ve made occasional trips back to Seward in their small dory for supplies. Since leaving New York nearly a month and a half ago, Kent has written and mailed many letters but he has received few. The artist hasn’t started painting, except perhaps for a few “impressions” he’s doing on plywood. He has no canvas. He is sketching, writing and absorbing the land and seascape.

“raining Wary Hard,” Olson writes in his journal on Sept. 14. “the litly angora queen ar in Hit this morning. Fraet steamer from West going to Seward.” A steamer meant a chance to get and send out mail, so Kent and Rocky begin looking out for more steamers and waiting for a good sea day to head to Seward. But a SE storm hits, so bad that on the 15th the goats spend all day in their cabin. The artist and his son have been on the island seventeen days as of today (Sept. 14) and they’ve had only one rainless day. That makes it hard for Kent to chink the openings between the log walls of his cabin, some four to five inches wide and two feet long. Along this maritime climate zone, Alaskans who read of the artist’s plight can identify with how the damp cold inside their cabin can wear one down. Sourdoughs chink those holes with moss which must be dry first in the sun and wind. Kent and Rockie stuff the holes with their clothes – socks and sweaters. It’s warm and cozy here now!” Kent writes.

With so much disorder in his personal life, the artist strives “to make out of a wilderness an ordered place.” I’ve titled the first chapter of this book to be “A Fact Worth Celebrating,” and you can read it in the previous entry. I discuss Kent’s romantic concept of wilderness. Even with the rain, he is out clearing the woods around his cabin and cutting firewood – pioneering. “Ah,” he writes, “it’s a fine and wholesome life!”

Kent doesn’t have an accurate idea of the winter sun in this latitude. “Just think!” he writes, “they’ll be months this winter when we’ll not see the sun from cove – only see it touching the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange life without the dear, warm sun!”

We do get shorter days here in Seward, but we also get some spectacular clear winter days when we do see the sun as it works its way across the Resurrection Bay from the eastern Resurrection Peninsula to western mountain range.

And then there’s Olson. Kent has had time to get to know the old Swede by now and listen to his stories. “I believe he can give one the material for a thrilling book of adventure… and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could surpass it.” Fortunately, Kent records many of Olson’s adventures in Wilderness. On one return trip from Alaska to Idaho in the 1880’s, a saloon keeper friend gathered all his customers all around and asked the Swede to tell of his northern adventures. “Olson,” he gushes when he’s finished, “that would be the greatest book in the world – if was only lies.” The old man is a philosopher and keen observer, Kent writes. Both father and son have had painful and annoying felons. Rockie now has one on his finger, and his father is concerned about having to cut it down to the bone. Not a pleasant prospect either for him on Rockie. That reminds him of Olson mettle, who “if his eye troubled him seriously, would stick in his finger and pull it out, -- and then doubtless fill the socket with tobacco.” There’s something about Olson that connects him to Kent’s idea of the wilderness. It’s his sense of freedom and liberty; his loathing of government and authority; his appreciation of solitude; his kind audacity and love of animal – especially his courageous resistance to the effete culture of the herd. Olson is wilderness incarnate to Kent.

What I’ve described above can be found in Wilderness and in parts of Kent’s letters, especially the illustrated ones designed to be passed around and read by friends and family. Some of the letters, as I’ve show in past entries, demonstrate his emotional vulnerability, his despondency, depression and uncertainty about his future. It’s important to understand that the Rockwell Kent who came to Seward in August 1918 was not the Rockwell Kent (in many ways) most knew much later in life. After Fox Island, his life changed dramatically. “The success of the two Alaskan shows and of my book Wilderness, began a period of such financial security as Kathleen and I had hitherto not known,” he wrote in his 1955 autobiography. “Not only that but, no longer dependent on the work of Hogarth Jr. {his pseudo name for incidental work he did to earn a living}, I could now paint. The immediately following years were to be the most consistently productive of my life.”

PHOTOS

Upper right, Kent photo their cabin’s large south facing window he put in to create more light. Below right, interior Kent sketch of west facing cabin window. You can see the large window at left and the door at right. Upper left a pen and ink from Wilderness. Beneath it a Kent self-photo of him cutting wood, from the Archives of American Art Collection.

Seward looking south on April 19, 1906. A steam ship comes into port in the distance. Steamer arrivals were events that shut businesses temporarily while everyone wandered down to the dock to greet passengers and collect mail and supplies. Courtesy of the Resurrection Bay Historical Society.

An early photo of Olson (circa 1916) on Fox Island with an unknown child riding one of the goats. Kent family album photo

A Kent photo of Rockie with the north side of the cabin in the background. The door is open, and if you look closely you can see the light shining in the large south facing window. The outhouse is to the far left.