Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

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...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “Why do men love the wilderness? For its mountains? – there may be none. For its forests, lakes, and rivers? It might be a desert; men would love it still. Desert, the monotonous ocean, the unbroken snowfields of the North, all solitudes, no matter how forlorn, are the only abiding-place on earth of liberty.” Salamina by Rockwell Kent, p.22 Kent arrives in Vancouver today. One of the qualities I admire most about Rockwell Kent is his appreciation of solitude. No – “appreciation” is not the right word. A better word would be “need.” Solitude was essential for Kent. Not that he was a recluse or loner. He thrived in cities like New York as well. He needed that kind of intellectual stimulation. But there are other intellectual stimulants. Notice that his Alaska book – Wilderness – includes in its subtitle the phrase “quiet adventure.” One of the themes of Wilderness is that adventure doesn’t have to ...