Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Part 2 – Back from Tierra del Fuego November 4-7, 2019 ABOVE – Rockwell Kent with his fellow traveler, Ole Ytterock, aboard the SS Curaca on their way to Punta Arenas, Chile in 1922. Ytterock, a sailor from Norway, was known as “Willie.” These hand-colored glass lantern slide are courtesy of the Rockwell Kent Gallery at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York. For an interesting article about this trip. BELOW – Photo take on Bayly Island, Chile in 1923. Kent is holding Kathleen Kent Garcia, an infant named after him who he has just baptized. be watchful... but have your finger ready at the trigger. …I, on one of my New York visits in the early spring of 1922, fed up with the whole emotional mess into which I had gotten myself, could say – and probably aloud, I was at that time so distraught—: “If there’s a worse place in the wor...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Part I – Onward to Tierra del Fuego November 1-4, 2019 ABOVE – “Resurrection Dream.” Resurrection Bay in late October 2019. Photo by Jim Pfeiffenberger. BELOW – Another day, another mood at Resurrection Bay in late October 2019. Fox Island is at center. Capra photo. A Damp Drizzly November in My Soul I won’t say the romance of Alaska has died for Rockwell Kent by the time Olson leaves Vermont – but perhaps his idealism has been replaced by the reality of his new situation. He’s finally getting some recognition. As he leaves Alaska and settles in Vermont, part of him most likely always knows that regardless of whether he achieves success or not, Fox Island will fade into a dream or memory. It’s no accident he ends Wilderness with, Ah, God. And now the world again! By the time Olson is gone, he has probably decided he won’t be going back to Alaska. He consider...