NOVEMBER 8 - 13, 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

Nov. 8 - 13, 2018

Seward, Alaska – At the head of Resurrection Bay:

I write this on Nov.14, 2018. Yesterday and today the skies cleared partially and the sun came out. We’ve had heavy rain the last few days with mild temperatures, high 30’s and low 40’s. A few days ago a huge storm moved through South Central Alaska, the heaviest rain on the eastern Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound. As I sat at home listening to the hard rain hitting the roof -- occasionally glancing out the window at the dim gloom of mid-afternoon -- I imagined what it must have been like for Kent and Rockie on Fox Island during this kind of weather. They’re living in a 14 x 17-foot log cabin with a four-foot-high door. There’s a large south facing window and a 2 x 2-foot west facing window. He gives a detailed description of the cabin’s interior on p. 13-14 of Wilderness (1970 reprint). Kerosene lamps and candles provide most light on the cloudy, rainy days for painting, sketching, reading and writing. If outside work must be done, like cutting firewood, the pouring rain soaks. If you walk any distance you return to the cabin drenched and must strip and dry your woolens by the glowing stoves. With the mild temperatures outside, it becomes uncomfortably hot inside the cabin. Olson is in Seward for nine days during these early November days. Kent is isolated, and in a depressed mood has referred to Fox Island as an exile. He can’t get to Seward on any regular schedule, and after his mid-September near disaster with Rockie on his return to the island, he now realizes the potential dangers of every trip. He has no realistic communication with his family or with Hildegarde. He’s used to quick mail service – even when he’s in New York and his wife was on Monhegan Island. He could get a letter, answer it that day, send it off, and it would reach its location in a few days at most. Now he’s receiving letters in large batches sometimes written months ago. The same is true for Kathleen. There’s no letter-response, letter-response. She also gets batches sent weeks or a month earlier.

On Nov. 4^th, Kathleen writes to her husband – remember, though -- Kent won’t get this letter for a week or ten days at best. She and the children have left Monhegan and are in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with her family. “It is nearly a month now since I received your terribly unhappy letters,” she writes – referring to those ranting missives Kent sent while in Seward between Sept. 18 – 24^th in response to her meetings with Mr. Walker, the patrol boat man. “I read through them once and couldn’t bear to look at them again. I have loved you dearly all these weeks and I believe that a happy and relieved letter is on the way to me now.” She includes a “snap” (photo) of the children on the sloop “Aurora,” an hour after they left Monhegan. Kathleen writes again on Nov.7^th. She hasn’t yet received that “happy and relieved” letter from Kent. “I do wish that longed-for letter from you would come.” Otherwise, her letter is filled with talks of sewing, washings, meals, relatives, and trips she’s taking in a friend’s flivver. Kathleen is much happier with family and friends, and “The children are having a wonderful time,” she writes, “with so much space and freedom and so many other youngsters to play with.”  In writing of herself and the children she refers to “the remains of this family,” – no doubt a reminder to her husband that he has taken Rockie away from her. She ends: “Give my beloved little son a huge, grown up hug and loads of kisses, and get him to give {the same}to you from your ever-loving wife, Kathleen.”

The weather on Fri., Nov. 8^th is fair. The rain has stopped, so Kent decides to launch his dory. It takes so long to install their engine on the boat – it weighs 100 pounds – that the wind has risen. They decide to go out anyway. “The chop was devilish,” he writes, “short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to another with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath, -- and running up onto a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak landing with a splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with water.” Kent’s dory is a rocker with a pointed bow and stern, so it can better ride the swells and waves. They find a calm spot, Kent shuts down the engine, and sketched a view of the island. The engine won't start, so they row home. “The rest of the day we worked on the motor,” Kent writes, “first to find out why she wouldn’t run, then, having found and fixed that, to put other parts in still better order, and then, by far the longest time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the course of our fixing we had broken.” Kent works late into the early morning hours as the north wind builds – doing one of the sketches of himself and Rockie. The cabin shakes and the timbers creak. One of the overhead collar beams falls “with a crash and clatter, -- and Rockwell sleeps on.”

The Great War really ends on Nov. 11th, not on the 7^th or 8^th “False Armistice” as Olson had reported on his return. But Kent makes no mention of the actual armistice. Isolated as they are on Fox Island, they are far removed from the world’s conflicts.

Saturday, Nov. 9^th – “A gray day, and a cold one,” Kent writes, with snow on the ground. They don’t accomplish much – but they do fix the engine and Kent cuts some firewood. During his first two months he cut several cords, but now he must produce a cord a week to keep up his supply because he’s feeding two stoves. “Rockwell sports a pair of ‘Ladies boots’ that Olson had been keeping for some possible emergency,” Kent writes. We’ll never know the nature of the “emergency” Olson had in mind.

“The days run by, true winter days,” Kent writes on Nov. 12^th, “snow, cold, and wind, -- what wind!” Kent is fascinated with the power of that north, northwest wind. “It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts sweep upon us roaring as they come; flying twigs and ice beat on the roof, the boards creak and groan under the wind’s weight, the lamp flutters, moss is driven in and falls upon my work table, the canvas over our bed flaps, -- and then in a moment the winds are gone and the world is still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far off forest roar. " The pond is now frozen and Kent and his son skate. “Rockwell does pretty well for a child beginner,” Kent writes.

Olson has his own private still on Fox Island, despite the fact that the territory went dry on Jan. 1, 1918. Using raisins, ginger ale and a dash of sugar, he shares his concoction with Kent – who calls it “quite thrilling.” The Swede has brought from Seward 24-dozen “bad” eggs for fox feed -- probably given to him by T.W. Hawkins of Brown and Hawkins General Store – the fox farm financer. But why waste them on the fox? Kent cracks 17 and finds 6 good ones to make an omelet for dinner.

As an experienced trapper, the old Swede suggests to Kent methods to “trap” patrons to help him support his art. By now Olson has attached himself to his two companions. It’s lonely for him on the island and he thrives on their company. Most respect him in Seward as one of the last members of a dying generation of pioneers – but he has few if any close friends. Some make fun and tease him. With the construction of the Alaska Railroad underway, Seward is looking toward the future not the past. Alaska becomes a full-fledged territory in 1912, the same year Seward becomes an incorporated city. There has been talk of statehood. In 1916 Alaska’s non-voting congressional delegation presents a statehood bill. It fails. To some Olson is an embarrassment, not the modern, progressive image they want presented as representing the new Alaska.

That evening Kent reads an Anderson’s fairy tale to Rocky – the Chinese Nightingale. With Rocky now asleep, he escapes into his Life of William Blake by Gilchrist.

Nov. 13 is just another day. They skate, eat their meals, play their dishwashing game. Kent has spent the last three days working on his Chart of Resurrection Bay that will eventually grace the endpapers of Wilderness. One can see both his fascination with the north wind and with the art of William Blake. As busy as he is, Kent tries to focus enough attention on Rockie for, he writes: “I do recollect mighty often that I’m not doing my full part here unless I become a nine-year-old child for my son’s amusement just as he becomes a four legged creature at times for the astonished goats.” The goats might also be surprised that Rockie is wearing that pair of ladies boots Olson loaned him.

 “November the thirteenth!” Kent writes. “How time sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon must cross again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin corner. I shiver and – go to bed.”

PHOTOS

Looking south from Seward out into Resurrection Bay at 1:41 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2018. The three peaks of Fox Island are just right of center. Caines Head is just right of the western peak. Photo by Marianna Keil, with thanks.

 Sketches and a photo of Kent's cabin on Fox Island. Upper left, looking at the west facing window from the south facing window; upper right, Kent took this photo of the south facing window; lower left, sketch of the north side of the cabin with the magpie cage on the wall and the tree stump with ax; lower right, sketch from the east wall looking west, with both windows visible.

Two stories from the Seward Gateway, one about the war's end and the other about the influenza. Those two events cloud the backdrop of Kent's "quiet adventure" in Alaska. The photo shows a dog team leaving Seward and heading north along the Iditarod Trail.

 Kent worked steadily on this detailed pen and ink Chart of Resurrection Bay for several days from about Nov. 10th on. During this same time the north and northwest wind howl and shake their cabin. Also during this time Kent is reading the life of William Blake. The chart eventually becomes the endpapers for his book, Wilderness.