Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “I can’t face the thought of the loneliness I’m going into…Can you come to Alaska with me?...Never did I enter upon any course with such a sense of necessity, of duty, as drives me into this Alaska trip.” Rockwell Kent in letters to his wife, Kathleen 100 YEARS AGO While aboard the Admiral Schley Kent wrote some letters, perhaps while in the ship’s salon where a picture of a “forgetful looking person” reminded him of that duty. “Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days imaginable,” he wrote to his friend, Carl Zigrosser, “ever so clear, so that the distant Rocky Mountains or the Cascade Range was visible. The islands fascinated him and the mountains were “most romantic and alluring with canyon and forest.” Rocky played on deck for hours by himself while Kent viewed the scenery and played his flute. It would be difficult work creating a home place in the Alaska wilderness, and Rocky wou...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 On August 1st 100 years ago Kent and Rocky rose early aboard the train. By 7:30 they were all dressed up and waiting to arrive in Vancouver for breakfast. "There we shall take the first steamer we can and go north to Skagway where we’ll probably change to another. But this is all guess work." That wasn't to be the case. Kent liked to travel with little planning. From his letters, it's clear that he rarely knew precisely what would happen next.  He wrote many letters on the train -- to his mother, to his wife Kathleen, to Carl Zigrosser, and especially to his lover back in New York, Hildegarde Hirsch. Kent's tiny handwriting script is difficult to read normally, but all the bumps and jolts on the train, which he noted, makes it all the more difficult. At this point he'd given up on getting his wife to join him in Alaska, so he turned that effort toward Hildegarde. "Wha...