PART I - JANUARY 2 TO FEBRUARY 11, 1919
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS
CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
Part I – Jan. 2 – Feb. 11,
1918
ABOVE – A bald eagle devours
a coastal mountain goat that has fallen off the cliffs along Resurrection Bay
near Caines Head. I took this photo on May 29, 2008 – about the time of year
the kids are born. The kids scamper around only hours after birth, but are not too steady on their feet. The females usually give birth lower down on the
mountains and remain there until the kids learn to maneuver the cliffs. Meanwhile the black
bears are coming out of dormancy and go after the young goats, and the bald eagles
dive on them trying to make them lose their balance and fall. Capra photo.
This period of Kent and
Rockie’s stay on Fox Island – between Jan. 2nd and Feb. 11th
– deserves a separate section to itself for many reasons.
Lars Olson leaves Fox Island
for Seward on January 2, 1919. His main mission is to pick up his territorial
pension check and probably stock up on supplies. As far as Kent is concerned,
Olson’s main job is to pick up his (Kent’s) mail and return as soon as
possible. The Christmas mail boat hasn’t arrived in time for the holiday
celebration, so Kent and young Rocky are anxious to get their presents, hear
from home, and send out batches of new letters.
ABOVE - This is a sketch
within Kent’s Dec. 24, 1918 letter to Kathleen of the mail box Kent made and
attached to the inside cabin wall.
More important – Kent
desperately needs to know how Kathleen reacts to those two sincere and
heartfelt New Year’s Eve letters delivered by George Chappell and Carl
Zigrosser, with the flowers and sketches and gifts. Kent believes he is a
changed man, fully understanding how cruel and hurtful he has been to Kathleen
-- and has told her so in those letters.
He’s determined to make things right. When he returns, he tells Kathleen
they will leave New York City forever and move into the country somewhere in
New England far from cities and crowds. His experience in Alaska has reinforced
his need for solitude – not the kind of isolation he’s experiencing on Fox
Island. Not loneliness – but his own Walden Pond with his family and visits
from close friends. A place away from the masses, separated from the herd’s
influences, especially upon his children. By January 1919, Kent knows that Fox
Island may be his metaphoric Northern Paradise – and the art he produces may give him the success he craves – but Fox
Island is no place to live.
We see this in his
letters, especially in an extremely revealing one to Kathleen on Dec. 12th:
“To-day
has been a fine working day for me and my mind is fairly straight about you. So
I guess there’ll be no sadness in this letter – although it is always with deep
relief that I finish a letter to you without mishap. So often my mood slides
downhill and I wind {up} with yourself, myself, and the letter all in the
deepest pit of dejection.” Kent knows his tendencies and admits as
much to his wife. And – until his sincere anniversary letters, it is difficult
to find a letter of his to Kathleen that doesn’t at some point descend into
despair and criticism.
ABOVE - A worn Sitka spruce along the Fox Island beach. Capra photo taken on June 19, 2008.
“I’ve had an idea
for you in answering my letters. Answer them one at a time. When I have written
you pages about our future you devote a few of your little pages to just that.
It will give you subject matters for your letters. You know I care less for ten
pages of chat about your daily doings than for a few words of love, though I
want both.”
Kent is obsessive about Kathleen’s letters to him. They are not detailed
enough, long enough, loving and admiring enough. Later, as we’ll see, he is
asking his friend George Chappell to coach Kathleen in the kind of letter
writing Kent wants. To him, his letters are a form of art. He throws all his
energy into them – both positive and negative - the same dynamism he puts into
his paintings and sketches. He expects Kathleen to do the same for him.
ABOVE - An American Black Oyster Catcher
searches for limpets, snails and barnacles along the intertidal zone at the
northern end of Kent’s Fox Island cove. Capra photo taken on May 26, 2015.
“Rockwell and I
have been playing cards every evening a little while. It helps to keeps my mind
normal. It was his idea. He’s my physician. Mother dear – he is so (lonely) now
and he loves you so dearly. Every night I read to him and he cuddles close to
me. And on cold nights I take him in my arms for comfort and sleep dreaming of
you. When
he told Kathleen before leaving for Alaska that he needed to take Rockie
because he could not bear the loneliness, he was serous. From a nine-year-old’s
point of view, Rockie probably knew more about Kent’s depression on Fox Island
than has been previously discussed. Here we see that playing cards may have
been Rockies suggestion to help his father get back to normal.
“Here is news for you – I don’t think I can by
any chance stay late into the spring. I cannot endure it… I wish would you were
coming here so that we could return together. Well, I mustn’t talk of that but
just be glad that I cannot keep away much longer.” The story as
previously published about Kent’s Alaska trip tells us that he leaves early to
save his marriage. That’s part of the truth. The other part is that Kent is
driven back to his wife by the wilderness itself. He can’t face real wildness the
real dangers, the severe isolation, the harsh weather, the deep darkness of an
Alaska winter, and the unforgiving seas. In his memoir, Carl Zigrosser wrote: “Whatever he could not meet and overcome – he was
very competitive – he would obliterate and act as if it had never existed. Had
he lost his faith, the whole structure of his life would have crumbled.”
At first Kent is enthralled at
the pioneer experience of clearing the land, repairing the cabin, chinking the
spaces between the logs, cutting firewood – the romance of wilderness living. But
after his near-death experience with Rockie returning to Fox Island from Seward
on Sept. 24 in the 18-foot overloaded dory – he begins to face the reality of
life on an island in Alaska during the winter 12 miles from the nearest town. This
is the sublime wilderness – what Thoreau experienced when he briefly left his
abode at Walden Pond and trekked through Maine and attempted to scale Mount
Kadahan. In The Maine Woods, Thoreau
writes of “Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature {that} has got him at a disadvantage,
caught him alone and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not
smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly, Why came ye here
before your time. This ground is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I
smile in the valleys? I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for
thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee
here, but forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me
where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me but a
stepmother? Shouldst thou freeze or starve, or shudder thy life away, here is
no shrine, nor altar, nor any access to my ear…This was that Earth of which we have heard, made
out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden…It was not lawn, nor
pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor wasteland…Man was not
to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific…rocks, trees, wind on
our cheeks! the solid earth!
the actual world!”
ABOVE - Dead and worn spruce trees along the Fox Island beach. Capra photo taken on July 31, 2006.
In Alaska Kent faces that great
abyss -- authentic wildness. Its sublime beauty offers him wonder, inspiration
and content for his art. But there's also the sublime terror -- the darkness, the seas, that north wind -- how nature’s forces have
isolated him on his little island. This is no Monhegan Island, nor Brigus, Newfoundland. He can’t get his mail.
Hildegarde won’t join him and neither will Kathleen. Wilderness is both his
enemy and his friend. Perhaps that’s why Kent didn’t surrender to the wild
in later years. After Alaska he ventured to Tierra del Fuego and tried to make
it around the cape. Later he would make several trips to Greenland. He refused
to let the wilderness defeat him. As Zigrosser observed, Kent is extremely
competitive. He must control his wild friend, use it, defeat its attack on him.
Perhaps if he follows Nietzsche and can will himself to victory -- even with Kathleen. She will not join him for many reasons, but mostly for financial reasons. But Kent refuses to give up on her. In that Dec.
12th letter to Kathleen he writes: “Mother, darling, I am at last sure of your
coming. To-morrow, maybe I’ll write you all details of it. To-night I love you.
Oh Mother, how dearly you cannot know…Here now in Alaska together you and I
would find in a few days a recompense for (our) life of suffering – and we
would build in those few days the foundation of a greater love than we have
ever dreamed of.”
If he has a woman with him in the wilderness – Kathleen or Hildegarde – perhaps
he can defeat it. But he can’t do this alone.
ABOVE - A lone Steller’s Jay sits
on a Sitka Spruce snag. To the left is the southern headland of Kent’s cove.
Behind the snag is Callisto Head with Bear Glacier hidden behind it in the fog.
Capra photo taken on June 5, 2008.
But now it’s early January. Olson is gone.
Kent hasn’t had any mail for three weeks. He doesn’t know how Kathleen will
respond to his genuine change of heart expressed in those two New Year’s Eve
anniversary letters. For about the first week of Olson’s
absence Kent is anxious, irritated, and depressed. But he eventually settles
down and gets to work on his illustrated journal and art. The old Swede’s
absence is only supposed last a few days. The weather is good enough for
Olson to have returned on January 12th and 13th, but he
doesn’t. Kent and Rockie are constantly hiking to the south end of their beach
where they can see Seward around Fox Island’s northern headland – hoping to spy
a small boat heading their direction with an old man at the helm. They observe
at least one steamship pass the island, so there could be mail. Meanwhile, Kent
and Rockie write more letters than the little mailbox they have nailed to the
cabin wall can hold.
TO BE CONTINUED
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