MARCH 14-16, 1919

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

March 14-16, 1919

ABOVE – "Sunrise and Sea Smoke II" I took this photo  one freezing cold morning in late January or February sometime between 1999 and 2000. The view is looking south from Seward out into Resurrection Bay. When temperatures dip into the teens or single digits combined with a fierce north wind we get sea smoke because the sea water is warmer than the air above it. This is the weather Kent experiences in March 1919 just before he leaves Fox Island. Capra photo.

During March 14 and 15 the north wind scourges, driving the bitterly cold temperatures down to unbearable wind-chill digits. Despite the cold Kent paints outside attempting with difficulty “to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite splendors of this place.” In between, last-minute packing. Much must be left behind, and that will be difficult. Still, the interior looks sterile.

ABOVE – Kent’s pen and ink of the cabin interior, from Wilderness.

 “We have made a thoroughly good job of it – I hope,” he writes. “But who can tell what strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates and bundles?” He’s especially concerned about his unfinished paintings rolled up for transport. The evening of the 15^th ushers in a calm with clear skies and a stunning full moon. The wind dies down, though it’s still cold. Kent would have left for Seward, but Olson wants to take them to Sunny Bay and Humpback Creek in Humpy Cove.

By noon a bright sun takes the bite out of the low temperature. They launch off the beach in Olson’s dory, the “little engine, sputtering, stammering, stopping a great deal, carried us upon our trip.” Sheer thirty-foot high waterfalls tumble down into Humpy Cove. “The falls to-day were frozen and spread wide over the face of the cliff,” Kent observes, “but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form. He may have utilized some of his imagination to use these waterfalls in his art, moving them to different locations. 

ABOVE – Kent’s sketch of a waterfall in Humpy Cove, from Wilderness.

BELOW – A waterfall in Humpy Cove in summer courtesy of Kayaker's Cove.

 They dodge the quickly retreating tide as they explore the shoreline. Olson shows them a small abandoned cabin. Ah, Kent recalls. This was the cabin they were seeking when the found Olson that late August day in 1918. It looks snug and comfortable, but no substitute for their Fox Island converted goat shed. Lucky they met up with Olson that August day. At Sunny Cove an old trapper meets them on the beach – feeble and emaciated. He’s been sick all winter. “What a forlorn latter end for a man!” Kent laments. “He drags himself about each day, cuts wood, lugs water, cooks, and when he stoops dizziness overcomes him. He sets a small circle of traps and drags himself around to tend them. His whole winter’s work is twelve ermine and two mink – thirty or forty dollars’ worth at the most. We offered to bring the old man back with us and from here on to Seward – but he preferred to stay there a few days longer.”

BELOW – “To the Pioneer” – A poem in the March 9, 1916 issue of the Seward Gateway.

Kent probably sees Olson’s fate in the Sunny Cove trapper. Indeed, Olson may see himself facing that kind of end. What will become of him, all alone on Fox Island, when Kent and Rockie leave? He’s over 70 years old and can’t do the jobs he used to do. Kent has been helping him out. Olson’s lonely, considering enticing an Alaska native woman to come live with him. Olson’s often dropping in on the Kents when he’s on the island, wanting to socialize and tell his stories. He’s learned, however, when to just sit silently when Kent is absorbed in his work. Other times Kent encourages him, listens and records those stories. We are fortunate he does that. Olson is an example of those ghosts we see in old Alaska photographs from Circle City, Eagle, Forty Mile, Hope, Sunrise, Ruby, Flat, Iditarod and Nome. Who are these people? What are their names? Where did they come from? Most of the group photos are not labeled. These men and women have disappeared into history’s abyss. We know nothing about them. The same may have been true for Olson but for Kent’s interest in recording much about his life. In letters to his wife, Kent has fretted over Olson fearing that, if left alone, he might just die one day with no one to notice. The animals would slowly perish without care, and his friend’s body would be discovered months later. Ironically, that’s just how Olson did die in 1922, alone in his cabin outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The three leave the old Sunny Cove trapper and return to the fox farm. In the March 16, 1919 journal in Wilderness, Kent writes one of the most poignant paragraphs in the book: “And now I sit here with our packed household goods about me, empty walls and dismantled home. Still we hardly realize that this beautiful adventure of ours has come to an end. The enchantment of it has been complete; it has possessed us to the very last. How long such happiness could hold, such quiet life continue to fill up the full measure of human desires only a long experience could teach. The still, deep cup of the wilderness is potent with wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved a lifetime forward to a finer youth.”

I’ve often quoted that last two sentences to tourists as I guided them through Resurrection Bay into the fjords and up to glaciers of Kenai Fjords National Park. The “deep cup” reference reminds me of John Muir’s writings. Kent may have read Muir. The last sentence confirms Kent’s realization at mid-age – that even as we grow old -- the beauty and wisdom we humans extract from wildness, even if we just taste it – can make us young. 

ABOVE -- Spire Cove in Kenai Fjords National Park. Capra photo.

Kent’s paragraph continues: “How long such a life could continue to charm, one of course cannot know; but it is clear to us now as we leave it that we have only begun to know the wonders of the life and of the land. We are both resolved in our hearts to return here and explore freedom to its limits – truly a life time’s plan. We have learned what we want and are therefore wise. As graduates in wisdom we return from the university of the wilderness.”

Kathleen has been writing a series of letters to him since New Year’s Eve. I’ve covered some of these in the website. As I’ve written before, her letters are extremely difficult to read. Some have large sections that can’t be read at all. A few are so blurred or faded that nothing can be deciphered at all. My wife and I have tried to interpret the gist of the more difficult ones. They confirm her love, show hope in the future of their marriage, but also demonstrate a strength and confidence we haven’t seen before. There are trust issues the two have to settle when Kent returns.  The Hildegarde issue is still up front. Kent got a batch of her letters when Olson returned to the island on Feb. 11th and perhaps a few more when they ventured to Seward on Feb. 21^st. He most likely gets more when he leaves Fox Island for good on March 18th. He stays in Seward for a few weeks until he departs Alaska at the end of the month.

ABOVE – A scene from Kenai Fjords National Park. Capra photo.

For now, on February 16, 1919, this steadfast trinity – Lars Matt Olson, Rockwell Kent II, and his son Rockwell Kent III – have two more days together on the island. The Kent’s will leave on Tuesday, March 18, 1919 and spend a few weeks in Seward before departing Alaska. In later years Rockie recalled taking a train ride north with his father until deep snow stopped their progress. And during their last few days in the territory, Kent will write a letter to the editor of the Seward Gateway that prompts a controversy that, to my knowledge, he never acknowledged in print. Indeed, Rockie had been unaware of the incident, even though it involved him. When I met Rockie a few years before he died, I showed him all the newspaper articles and he read them with fascination. “I never knew this happened,” he told me.