Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Nov, 29-Dec. 5, 2018 – Part I Friday, Nov. 29, 1918             As their cabin shakes during the night with “such force that it seemed our thin roof could not stand it” – Kent and his son know they won’t be making a trip to Seward in the morning.              This “cabin shaking” seems particularly relevant today as I write this on Friday, Nov. 30, 2018. This morning at 8:29 we experienced a 7.0 earthquake, its epicenter about ten miles north of Anchorage. In Seward we had off and on tsunami warnings for a few hours and most of us evacuated to higher ground. Anchorage received significant damage.   For Kent night that night of wind and rain, was as close as he came to one of the frequent earthquakes we get in Alaska along this Pacific Rim of Fire. For the...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Nov. 25-28, 2018 "It seems a law of fallen nature that life must always come to its being through darkness, and this makes us even more aware of its beauty. Dawn is lovelier because it comes after night, spring because it follows winter."             - Caryll Houselander The sublime -- the beauty and terror of nature. “It rages from the northeast!,” Kent writes on Monday, Nov. 25, 1918 . “The bay is a wild expanse of breakers. They bear into our cove and thunder on the beach. A mad day and a mad night. “ Kent and Rockie feel safe observing the uproar from the the beach or the inside of their Fox Island cabin. The tumultuous seas may bring back memories of that mid-September return trip to the island when the two voyagers were nearly killed. Ambivalent memories for Kent, for he would write on March 7, 1919 that fine adventuring is “flirting with danger...