DECEMBER 5 - 9, 2018 PART I

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

Today -- Dec. 9, 2018 – is the kind of day Kent occasional experienced this time of year while on Fox Island. The temperature hovers between ten and twenty degrees. The sea may be relatively calm, but after his recent trip to Seward there’s little need to return. Steamers with mail won’t arrive again for a few more weeks. It’s the kind of day that often arrives after a time of hard and steady rain. It’s the kind of day that raises your hopes, feeds your spirit, and gives you the inspiration to endure life’s hardships. It’s sometimes foreshadowed – as it was last night – by a star-filled sky with a shining moon and occasionally a stunning Aurora or Northern Light’s show. For Kent, days like this also mean more light for his painting. On the gloomy, dark days he’s forced to sketch and work in black and white. Now he can capture the impressive yet subtle and rapidly changing colors of sea, sky and mountains.

I took the above photo at about 10:30 a.m. today -- Sunday, Dec. 9, 2018 – from the choir loft of a 101-year-old former Methodist, later Lutheran Church in Seward. It stood here when Kent and Rockie were in town and looked as it does in the upper right of the photo series below. At left you can see it today with its owner, Micheley Kowalski, standing nearby. At lower right below is an interior shot taken during its 100th anniversary party last year, with many of its regular patrons. In this photo you can see the choir loft where I took the sunrise photo.

If those of you reading this website who have never been to Alaska are tempted by Kent’s story to someday visit the state – you must come to Seward and have a cup of coffee or tea at the Resurrection Art Coffee House and Art Gallery – or as we call it – Res. Art. This is where I do most of my writing, sitting at one of the original pews with my computer on one of the original tables. (Sorry – I couldn’t resist. I got a friend to take a few shots. See me below at work today.)

Now – back to our story.

Kent and Rockie have been on Fox Island as of this day, Dec. 9, 1918 for several days. They leave Seward on Dec. 5th, 1918. In Wilderness Kent writes of his five-day stay in town: “It’s truly a satisfaction to be in a country where men are alert enough to take no offense at alertness, where enterprise is so common a virtue that it arouses no suspicion, and where it is the rule to mind your own business.” He’s made new friends, strengthened others, and now has many offers of help for spring and summer. After two hours of preparation, his friend Don Carlos Brownell helps him load the dory, which is probably stuffed to the gunwales. By this time Kent knows how infrequent trips to Seward can be.

As they set out into the bay on Dec. 5th, the engine flutters and stops. It takes Kent fifteen minutes to fix it. A quarter of a mile out he learns that Rockie left the clock they bought in the snow by Olson’s cabin. They go back to get it. When they first got to the island in late August, Olson gave his old pocket watch to Rockie. That soon stopped – so they’ve been with a time piece for months, living by nature’s rhythms. Their timeless existence – combined with the stormy, overcast weather with reduced light enhanced only by the cabin’s large south-facing window aided by candles and lanterns – in some ways thrusts Kent and Rockie back into the heroic age of the ancient Greeks that Kent so much admires. But now at least they know what time it is.

Thursday, Dec. 5, 1918 is Kent’s first full day back on the island. They arrive late in the day and Kent is exhausted and stressed from his five days in Seward. He doesn’t reveal this in Wilderness, but makes sure Kathleen knows it in a letter he writes that day. I won’t go into detail here because I’ve written about this letter in a previous entry – but in summary: Kent writes about his fear of having caught the influenza and how he prepared for death and Rockie’s care; his stress at Rockie’s safety now that he knows how dangerous his water crossing are; and all this connects to his fear that he has lost his wife’s love. In Wilderness he tells of staring at one of his pictures this day – “that of Superman – and it appears truly magnificent.” He likes the figure’s gesture with the luminous northern lights behind it. Like the figure, Kent wants to “rise beyond the limits of expression into being!” This is Nietzsche’s influence, as Kent writes “of man’s destiny…rearing upwards beyond the narrow clouds of earth into the unmeasured space of night, his countenance glowing, his arms out-stretched in an embrace of wider worlds!” It’s his first day back on the island and he’s happy. “Now work begins,” he writes. “For weeks there’ll be no mail in Seward and for more weeks none here.” He can focus on his reason for being in Alaska.

Friday, Dec. 6, 1918 – Kent has been reading a short biography of Albrecht Durer, which prods him back into the Middle Ages. With all its faults, he concludes, it was a “splendid civilization,” a superior age for artists like himself. He quotes the description of an Antwerp banquet from Durer’s diary and adds: “Civilization is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the few or of the millions, nor by monarchy or republicanism, or even Freedom, not by whether we work with hands or levers – but by the final fruit of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art.”

This day he also writes to Kathleen: “God knows I want to make love you. My longings are quite without bounds; forever and ever and ever I could pet and caress and look at you.” Kent remains impressed with his reception during his last Seward trip. “It’s a great pleasure to be at last in a place where you are liked for just the qualities that elsewhere have caused dislike, my energy and enterprise. The men that came here are pioneers and prospectors, men accustomed to fend for themselves…They like originality and assume that there’s method in every man’s madness.” He fantasizes that she will be in Seward to surprise him on his next visit, “But I guess you don’t do things like that,” he adds – constantly reminding her that he resents her unwillingness to join him.

Rockie is composing a letter to Kathleen while also working on his animal book, which he took with him on their recent off-island trip. “It’s a wonderful book,” Kent writes. “It aroused the greatest interest in Seward.” But he’s conflicted. “…often I think I can never stay here to complete my work. I long for you and I worry about you. Never till this year have you broken promises. I didn’t know before that you could.” Her assurance of love and loyalty gives him the strength he needs to endure his struggle, and she hasn't been constant with that. She had promised to be faithful and love him – and to Kent that means long, loving, and adoring letters. Now she’s in New York and he doesn’t like her going to the theatre and parties with friends. Her letters aren’t focused enough on him. “I think I will have to trust you...So you must make me,” he demands.

         Kent looks forward to this period on the island between steamers when he can focus on his painting. He’ll also write many letters over a series of days while waiting for the next steamers arrivals. He has constructed a mail box in the cabin where he and Rockie deposit their letters as they write them. But there’s always firewood to chop, meals to cook, socks to mend, books for him to read and those to read to Rockie, in addition to monitoring his son’s education. Meanwhile time moves slowly toward the darkest days of the year followed by Christmas. And then New Year’s Eve, which will be the tenth anniversary of Kent’s marriage to Kathleen.