Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 While Rockwell and Rockie are still in Yakutat, I’ll backtrack a bit. Notice how I spelled his son’s name. While reading through the letters I’ve noticed that Kent spells it both with a “y” and an “ie.” His wife, Kathleen, spells it Rockie. So far I’ve been quoting mostly from his letters to Hildegarde Hirsch. Those letters will run through 1919 as Kent is on Fox Island, and a bit further. As I’ve said, Hildegarde’s letters to Kent have not survived, so we can only surmise from his letters how she may be responding.  It may appear from what I’ve written so far that Kent is only writing to Hildegarde. That’s not the case. He is sending Kathleen and his children many letters and postcards from the train and the ship. By Aug. 19, 1918 Kathleen has received a letter from Yakutat and writes him there from Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where she and the three girls are living. He doesn’t ...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Kent and Rocky quickly settled in to their life at Yakutat, although more and more it appeared to Kent that this was not the place for what he sought in Alaska. In later years, Rocky wrote little of the train and steamer trip, not that it wasn’t exciting. It just wasn’t as eventful as his stay at Yakutat. “We lived with the fishermen,” Rocky wrote in the Fall 2014 issue of The Kent Collector, “sleeping in bunks in the dormitory. Father was unhappy, grumbling to me about his bunk and grumbling to all about the food. He was especially contemptuous of a fellow boarder who covered his oatmeal with a quarter of an inch of sugar and added enough more to his coffee to make syrup. He told me that a man’s stupidity can be judged by the quantity of sugar he uses. Father’s unhappiness reached a zenith when he discovered that the gentleman in the neighboring bunk was pouring our tooth powder in his boots to hel...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Friday night, August 10, 2018 – An event happened in Resurrection Bay worth noting in this Kent journal. Kent’s cabin was located at the northern cove on the west side of Fox island – at the northern end of that cove. West across the bay and a little to the south sits Bear Glacier around the corner of what today is named Callisto Head. Kent labels in Caines Head on his pen-and-ink chart of Resurrection Bay because it didn’t get the current name until 1930. On a clear day from his cabin, Kent could probably see a sliver of Bear Glacier’s snout. If he hiked to the southern end of his cove, which he and Rocky often did, he could see a bit more. If he ventured around that headland to Sunny Cove, Kent could get an even better view. He could see it best when he took his small dory out of his cove and risked heading a bit south – potentially dangerous in winter. The artist was fascinated with Bear Glacier...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 I woke up this morning – August 11, 2018 – made my coffee, had some breakfast, and watched the news. A hundred years ago at the same time Kent and Rocky were aboard the Admiral Schley anticipating their arrival later today in Yakutat.  Kent wrote letters to pass the time. Those to Hildegarde are descriptive and revealing. By the evening of August 5th the two travelers were in Petersburg where Kent sent off a few posts. During the next days at sea Kent sat on the upper deck “writing and reading and blowing my flute.” The passing scenery amazed him, especially the mountains with their sides “cloaked in dark spruce forests while their peaks, bare of trees, patched with snow, are up in the clouds.” The weather had been clear and warm, but after Petersburg it started to rain. “I think we’ll not find an intense cold on this coast,” Kent wrote, “and rain through the winter rather than snow.” His foreca...

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...