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Wilderness; A Journal Of Quiet Adventure In Alaska

<h2>CHAPTER VII HOME</h2> <h3>Thursday, December fifth (Continued).</h3> Mild rainy, snowy, sleepy—this first day back at home. I’ve done little work and dared look at but one picture—that of Superman—and it appears truly magnificent. The sky of it is luminous as with northern lights, and the figure lives. After all it is Life which man sees and which he tries to hold and in his Art to recreate. To that end he bends every resource straining at what limits him. If he could only be free, free to rise beyond the limits of expression into being! at his prophetic vision of man’s destiny assuming himself the lineaments of it, in stature grown gigantic, rearing upwards beyond the narrow clouds of earth into the unmeasured space of night, his countenance glowing, his arms outstretched in an embrace of wider worlds! This is the spirit and the gesture of Superman.—So I’m not unhappy. Now work begins again. For weeks there’ll be no mail in Seward and for more weeks none here. [Pg 110] <h3>Friday, December sixth.</h3> I’m reading a little book on Dürer. What a splendid civilization that was in the Middle Ages, with all its faults. To men with my interests can anything be more conclusive proof of the superiority of that age to this than the position of the artist and the scholar in the community? Let me quote from Dürer’s diary. (Antwerp, a banquet at the burgomaster’s hall.) <blockquote> “All their service was of silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and very costly meats. All their wives were there also. And as I was being led to the table the company stood on both sides as if they were leading some great lord. And there were among them men of very high position, who all treated me with respectful bows, and promised to do everything in their power agreeable to me that they knew of. And as I was sitting there in such grandeur, Adrian Horebouts, the syndic of Antwerp, came with two servants and presented me with four cans of wine in the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and they had bid him say that they wish thereby to show their respect for me and assure me of their good will. Wherefore I returned my humble thanks—etc. After that came Master Peeter, the town carpenter, and presented me with two cans of wine, with the offer of his willing services. So when we had spent a long and merry time together till late at night, they accompanied us home with lanterns in great honor.” </blockquote> Oh land of porcelain bath-tubs! A man has only to leave all that by which we to-day estimate culture to realize that all of his own civilization goes with him right to the back woods, and lives there with him refined and undiminished by the hardships there. Civilization is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the few or of the millions, nor by monarchy, republicanism, or even Freedom, nor by whether we work with hands or levers,—but by the final fruit of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art. The obituary of to-day in America has surely now been written in the poor workshop of some struggling, unknown man. That is all that the future will know of us. All records for winds are broken by what rages to-night. From [Pg 113]the northwest it piles into our cove. The windows are coated with salt, and tons of flying water sail in clouds out of the bay hiding the mountains from the base to half their height. Our rafters bend beneath the blast; ice—from we know not where—falls upon us with a thundering noise. The canvases suspended aloft sway and flap, and from end to end of the cabin the breeze roves at will. It’s so ridiculously bad and noisy and cold that Rockwell and I just laugh. But the wood is plentiful for we cut some more to-day. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i136" class="border" src="images/i136.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="514" alt="" /> “GET UP!” </div> Last night at bedtime the wind had risen. At some midnight hour the stove went out for I awoke at two and found the cold all about us and the wind hard at it. So with a generous use of kerosene the fire was made to burn again and I returned to a good night’s rest. Somehow one doesn’t mind short exposures to the cold. Many a day I have stood naked out in the wind and then become at once glowing warm again in the hot cabin. Baked bread to-day and it turned out very well. Painted, shivered, wrote, and to-night shall try to design a picture of the “Weird of the Gods.” But at this moment our supper is ready and two hungry, cold mortals cannot be kept from their corn mush. <h3>Saturday, December seventh.</h3> Late! Now that we have a clock—I stole one in Seward—we live by system, our hours are regular. The clock I set by the tide, marking the rise of the water in the new-fallen snow. We rise at 7.30. It is then not yet sunrise but fairly light. Breakfast is soon cooked and eaten. To start the blood going hard for a good day’s work we spring out-of-doors and chop and split and saw in the glorious, icy north-wind. Then painting begins. I have scared Olson away—poor soul—but I make it up by calling on him just at dark when my painting hours are over. Now it’s eleven at night and I’ve still my bit to read. Whew, but[Pg 114] it’s cold to-night and the wind is rising to a gale. And last night!—what a bitter one. I got up four times to feed the ravenous fire. And even so the water pails froze. We cannot afford to let it freeze much in the cabin for our stores are all exposed. What if the Christmas cider should freeze and burst! I painted out of doors to-day—in sneakers! and stood it just about as long as one would imagine. To love the cold is a sign of youth—and we do love it, the Awakener. <h3>Sunday, December eighth.</h3> Log cabins stuffed with moss should be wonderful in the tropics. I’m about frozen. On this work table I must weight my papers down to keep them from flying about the room. And the wind is icy; it is bitterly, bitterly cold. Olson says we need expect no colder weather than this all winter. Of course we don’t really mind it. The stove is red hot and we may go as close to it as we please, and the bed is warm—except towards morning. At night I move my jugs of yeast and cider toward the stove, fill the “air-tight” to the top, pile blankets and wrappers upon the bed, and sleep happily. The gale still rages, fortunately not with its utmost fury. This morning Rockwell and I hurried through our chores and then climbed to the low ridge of the island. The snow in the woods is crusted and bore us up well so that we traveled with ease and soon reached the crest. Ah, there it was glorious; such blue and gold and rose! We looked down upon the spit and saw the sea piling upon it; we looked seaward and saw the snow blown from the land, the spray and the mist rising in clouds toward the sun,—and the sun, the beautiful sun shone on us. We took a number of pictures and then with numbed fingers and toes raced down the slope playing man-pursued-by-a-bear. Rockwell was wonderful to look at with his cheeks so red and clear. He loved our little excursion. And for the rest of the day we’ve worked. I stretched and coated [Pg 117]three large canvases, hateful job! painted, sawed wood, felled a tree—which the wind carried over onto another so that there it hangs neither up nor down,—and that’s about all. It’s again eleven and time for bed. The night is beautiful even if it is terrible; and the young moon is near setting. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i140" class="border" src="images/i140.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="637" alt="" /> MAN </div> <h3>Monday, December ninth.</h3> It blows worse than ever, and it is colder. All day the blue sky has been hidden in clouds of vapor and flying spray. The bay seethes and smokes and huge breakers race across it. It is truly bitter weather. Olson to-night ventured the prophecy that this was about the culmination of winter—but I know Olson by now. I cut another tree this morning to release the one of yesterday and both fell with a magnificent crash. Then we went to work with the cross-cut saw and stocked our day’s wood. Olson called this afternoon and related his recollection of the early days of Nome. <blockquote> “A certain man,” he began, “deserted from a whaler that stopped for water on the north coast of Alaska. He’d been shanghaied in San Francisco and was a tailor by trade. He made his way down the coast with the occasional help of the esquimaux. At last he came to Nome. The men were gone from the native village but a woman took him in. She was named English Mary. Now she had heard of the gold finds on the Yukon and she asked the man if he was a miner. He answered, ‘Yes.’ ‘You come with me,’ she said, and led him to a certain creek and showed him the shining nuggets lying thick upon the bottom. But the tailor really knew nothing about gold and let it lie. He continued down the coast and was at last carried to St. Michael. There he met a missionary and a young fellow who had come to Alaska with a party of prospectors. With those two he returned in a boat to Nome. You’ll hear different stories, to be sure, of how they got there but this is the right one, for[Pg 118] I’ve seen the boat they came in lying there off the beach. Well, they came and saw the gold but none of them could say for certain what it was. So one of them went off to get a man from the party of prospectors with whom the young fellow had come to Alaska. At last they got him there and he proved that it was sure enough gold. They staked their claims and began to work them. But word of gold travels fast and already others began to come. The miner of that first party drew up mining laws for the country and these were enforced. I was up on the Yukon when I heard of the first find at Nome. I went down and arrived there in the fall, a little more than a year after the strike. By that time there was quite a number there. “Some man had drawn up a plan of a town and was selling lots. I bought one on the northwest corner of the block. It was on the tundra. (Tundra is vegetation covered ice, soggy to a foot’s depth.) There was a tent on my lot and some wood, so I bought those too. But shortly after when I came home one day from prospecting I found that both the tent and the wood had been stolen. I bought lumber for the frame of a new tent. It cost me thirty dollars; that is, fifty cents a foot. By that time all kinds of people were pouring into Nome. They were taking out gold on the creek, those that had claims, at the rate of $5000 in a couple of hours. It was so heavy in the sand you couldn’t handle a pan-full. “Someone cut into my tent and cleaned me out—but I had nothing much besides a jack-knife. I borrowed ten dollars and went to work at a dollar an hour. A couple of rascals had come there, a judge and a lawyer; and they began to get busy swindling everybody out of their titles to claims. It was said openly that if you saw anyone’s claim ‘jump it,’ and the lawyers would make more money for you than you could get out in gold. There was no use in a man without money trying to hold a claim. And the crowd that was there! Gamblers, sharps, actors,—men and women of every kind—and they did act so foolish!—all out of their heads over the gold. The brothels were running wide open and robberies occurred in the town by daylight. Every man slept with his gun beside him and if he shot it was to kill. The robbers chloroformed men as they slept in their tents. [Pg 121] “There were thousands of people then and you could look out on the beach and see them swarming like flies. Everything was overturned for gold,—the entire beach for ten miles both ways from Nome was shoveled off into the sea. They dug under the Indian village till the houses fell in, and even under the graveyard.” </blockquote> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i144" class="border" src="images/i144.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="648" alt="" /> WOMAN </div> And so Olson’s story continues. A story of his life would really be—as an old pioneer in Seward told me—a history of Alaska. Because Olson has never succeeded he has been everywhere and tried everything. I have not done him justice in my abridgment of his Nome story. His recollections are so intimate. He remembers the words spoken in every situation and never, no matter how much an adventure centers in himself, does he depart in what he tells of himself from his character as I know him. I would not have devoted all of the time I have to this day’s entry if I had not a good day’s work to my credit including the conception of a new picture so vivid that the doing of it will be mere copying. It is the “North Wind.” Surely after the past four days I may tell with authority of that wild Prince from the North. <h3>Wednesday, December eleventh.</h3> Yesterday was too gloomy a day for me to risk a page in this journal. As to weather it was another fierce one, cold and windy. As to work accomplished—nothing. Olson in his cabin, on such a day, is a treat to see. I open the door and enter. There he sits near the stove, a black astrakhan cap on his head and the two female goats in full possession of the cabin. Nanny the milch goat is a most affectionate creature. She lays her head on Olson’s lap and as he scratches her head her eyes close in blissful content. “See her pretty little face,” says Olson, “and her lovely lips.” He’s certainly the kindest creature to animals—and to human ones too we have good reason to know. [Pg 122] To-day it is milder. The vapor is thick on the bay but it lies low upon the water and the magnificent mountains sparkle in the sunlight. Work has gone better for me and it has been a day not without accomplishment. I baked bread—beautiful bread, cut wood, helped Olson a bit, and had a glorious rough-house with my son. He’s a great fighter. I train him for the fights he’s bound to have some day by letting him attack me with all his strength; and that has come to be not a little thing. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i147" class="border" src="images/i147.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="372" alt="" /></div> <h3>Friday, December thirteenth.</h3> In the midst of letter writing I stop to note down a dramatic cloud effect. That’s the way the day’s work goes. If I’m out-of-doors busy with the saw or axe I jump at once to my paints when an idea comes. It’s a fine life and more and more I realize that for me at least such isolation—not from my friends but from the unfriendly world—is the only right life for me. My energy is too unrestrained to have offered to it the bait for fight and play that the city holds out, without its being spent in absolutely profitless and trivial enterprises. And here what[Pg 123] a haven of peace! Almost the last touch is added to its perfection by the sweet nature of the old man Olson. I have never known such a man. I’m no admirer of the “picturesqueness” of rustic character. Seen close to it’s generally damnably stupid and coarse. I have seen the working class from near at hand and without illusion. But Olson! he has such tact and understanding, such kindness and courtesy as put him outside of all classes, where true men belong. To-night it looked like the picture I have drawn. These are beautiful days. Yesterday it was as calm in our little cove as one would look for on a summer’s day. The day was blue and mild, a day for work. I made of my “North Wind” the most beautiful picture that ever was. I stood it facing outwards in the doorway and from far off it still showed as vivid, more vivid, and brilliant than nature itself. It’s the first time I’ve taken my pictures into the broad light. There’s where they should be seen. Last night was calm until four o’clock in the morning. Then the wind again struck in and the trees roared and the roof creaked and groaned. To-day it was calmer. We began by felling a tall spruce more than two feet in diameter. It lies now near the cabin a great screen of evergreen. Its wood should last us many weeks. I painted out-of-doors on two pictures. That’s bitterly cold work—to crouch down in the snow; through bent knees the blood goes slowly, feet are numbed, fingers stiffen. But then the warm cabin is near.... This minute I’ve returned from splitting wood out in the moonlight. On days when painting goes with spirit the chores are left undone. If only it were possible to put down faithfully all of Olson’s stories! Last night he told of his return to San Francisco from the Yukon thirty years ago, how the little band of weather-beaten, crippled miners appeared on their return to civilization. Olson was on crutches from scurvy, his beard and hair were of a year’s growth;[Pg 124] all were in their working clothes, all bearded, brown, free spirited. And their wealth they carried on them in bags, gold, some to $7000 worth. As Olson tells it you yourself live in that day. You hear the German landlady of the “Chicago Hotel” in San Francisco, a motherly woman who put all the grub on the table at once so you could help yourself, say, “You boys have some of you been in Alaska for years and I know about how you’ve lived. Now that you’re back you must have a hankering for some things. Tell me whatever you want and I’ll get it for you.” And up spoke one big fellow, “I remember how my mother used to have cabbage. I want you to get me one big head and cook it and let me have it all to myself!” That night they went to the music halls in their miners’ clothes all as they were, and drank gallons of beer; and from the boxes and the balconies the girls all clamored to be asked to join them—who were such free spenders. Two days later they were paid in coin for their gold—by the mint—and all went to the tailors and got them fine suits of clothes.... And so it continues. And he told of Custer’s massacre. And, to-night of the sagacity of horses in leading a trapper back to the traps he’d set and maybe lost. When a horse swims with you across a stream guide him with your hand on his neck, but pull not ever so little on the line or he’ll rear backwards in the water and likely drown himself and you. <h3>Saturday, December fourteenth.</h3> A pretty useless day. No work accomplished but the daily chores. What is there to say of such a day. Olson brought over his letter to Kathleen to-night and read it to us. It’s just like him to be really himself even at letter writing. The letter is full of nice humor. “She’ll think what kind of an old fool is that,” he said, “but what do I care. I’ll just say whatever I feel like saying.” And he always does. In a mild way he lives Blake’s proverb, “Always speak the [Pg 127]truth and base men will avoid you.” Some people have found Olson very rough and ill-mannered. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i150" class="border" src="images/i150.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="561" alt="" /> FOREBODING </div> Made bread to-night and stamped about seventy-five envelopes with my device. To-night it is mild and overcast. A light snow has begun to fall. So far this winter the fall of snow has been extremely light. It should bank up almost to the cabin’s eaves.... My bed awaits me. Good-night. <h3>Sunday, December fifteenth.</h3> This is another day that is hardly worth recording, one that would not be missed from a life. It’s time something were again said about young Rockwell who is the real, live, crowning beauty of the community. Weeks have passed since I last recorded his fresh delight in everything here. It is the same to-day. For hours he plays alone out-of-doors. Now he’s an animal crawling on all fours along the trunk of a tree that I have felled, going out upon its horizontal branches as the porcupines do, hiding himself in the foliage and growling fiercely—hours long it seems—while the foolish goats flee in terror and the foxes race wildly up and down the extent of their corral. Again he’s a browsing creature eating the spruce needles with decided relish,—doing it so seriously. Truly he lives the part he plays when it is one of his beloved wild creatures. Then he tears up and down the beach mounted like a four-year-old kid on a stick horse, yelling as loud as he can, going to the water’s edge, and racing the swell as it mounts the slope. And presently I capture him for his end of the saw. At that he no longer knows fatigue,—he’s as good as a man. He really never tires and the work goes on with a fine, jolly good-will that makes of the hardest chore one of the day’s pleasures. Rockwell is lonely at times; but if he tells me he’d like somebody to play with he’s sure to add in the same breath, “Ah well, never mind.” [Pg 128] I don’t know how such a haphazard education if continued would fit him for participation in the “practical” affairs of life. But I am convinced that if all the little beauties of spirit that can now be seen budding could be allowed free, clean growth, quite away from the brutal hand of mass influences, we’d have nothing less than the full and perfect flowering of a human soul;—and in our reachings toward supermanhood none can do more. Here, as an example, is an achievement of his imagination that it is hard to picture as surviving long in the atmosphere of a large school. Rockwell for two or three years has called himself the “mother of all things.” It is not a figure of speech with him but an attitude towards life. If it were the creed of a great poet—and it could be—the discerning critic might discover it to be of the profoundest significance in modern thought. In little Rockwell it is of one piece with his whole spirit which expresses itself in his love for all animals, the fiercest to the mildest, and for all growing things. The least manifestation of that which is thought to be typical cruelty of boys outrages his whole nature. I am far from believing Rockwell to be a unique example of childhood. I think that while cruelty appears uppermost where boys herd together, the love of animals is no less characteristic of many sensitive children. But of this I am certain,—that nothing will make a child more ridiculous in the eyes of the mob child than this most perfect and most beautiful attitude of some children toward life. In considering the education of a child and weighing what is to be gained or lost by one system or another I am inclined to think that no gain can outweigh the loss to a child of its loving, non-predatory impulses. <h3>Tuesday, December seventeenth.</h3> Once a miner died and presently found his way to the gates of heaven. [Pg 131] “What do you want?” said St. Peter. “To come in, of course.” “What sort of man are you?” “I’m a miner.” “Well,” said St. Peter, “we’ve never had anyone of that kind here before, so I suppose you might as well come in.” But the miner once within the gates fell to tearing up the golden streets of heaven, digging ditches and tunnels all over the place and making a frightful mess of it all. At last a second miner presented himself at the gates. “Not on your life,” said St. Peter. “We have one miner here and we only wish we knew some way to get rid of him. He’s tearing up the whole place.” “Only let me in,” said the second miner, “and I’ll promise to get rid of that fellow for you.” So St. Peter admitted him. This second miner easily found the other who was hard at work amid a shower of flying earth. Going up to him he cried in an undertone: “Partner! They’ve struck gold in Hell!” The miner dropped his work and sprang toward the gates. “Peter, Peter, open, open! Let me out of Heaven, I’m off to Hell!” <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i154" class="border" src="images/i154.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="504" alt="" /> LONE MAN </div> What a book of yarns and jokes this is becoming! To-day work went a little better—and the weather a little worse. It pours. For the end of December it is wonderfully mild; but then I expect little really cold weather here. To-night it is full moon. The tide is at its highest for the year and the southeast wind piles the water up till it reaches and overflows the land. Olson expects it to touch his house to-night if the wind continues. Tree trunks, uprooted somewhere from the soil, monstrous and grotesque, grind along our beach; the water is full of driftwood and wreckage. [Pg 132] <h3>Wednesday, December eighteenth.</h3> There’s a little bucket of dough that stands forever on the shelf behind the stove. Sour dough is made with yeast, flour, and water to the consistency of a bread sponge and then allowed to stand indefinitely. For all that you take out you add more flour and water to what’s left in the bucket and that shortly is as fit for use as the original mixture. Alaskans use it extensively as the basis for bread and hot cakes. You add but a pinch of soda and a little water to the proper consistency and it’s all ready for use. The old time Alaskans rejoice in the honorable title of “Sour Doughs.” Olson’s cabin in Seward stands comfortably on a little lot in a quite thickly settled part of the town. I wondered at his affluence in possessing a house and lot. Here is its history as he told it to me to-night. When Olson first came to Seward he built—or he bought already built—a little cabin standing on a part of the beach now occupied by the railroad yard. In course of time he went to Valdez for a winter’s work. Returning, he found no cabin. It was gone from that spot and he has not found it since. But corporations and governments are nothing to Olson when he feels himself injured. He went to one official and said, “See here! Winter’s at hand and I have no house, what are you going to do about it?” Well, they would see what could be done, and in time referred him to a higher authority. “I want a cabin,” Olson said to this one. “If you don’t give me the lumber to build one with I’ll have to steal it from you. I have no money and no cabin. Winter is here and I’m certainly going to live in a cabin this winter.” So they gave him an old shed to tear down and use but told him not to build on the beach. The town of Seward was laid off in lots. By the stakes Olson could tell a lot from a street, and fair and square on a lot, somebody’s lot, he put his cabin. The owner of the land was tolerant and let it stay there a few years; but one day he ordered Olson’s house taken off. So Olson carried it[Pg 133] somehow out into the middle of the street where it fitted in nicely among the tree stumps. Well and good for a little time till in the summer before last the town of Seward improved that street and sent a man and team to remove the stumps. “If you’re paid to remove the stumps you may as well move my house for me,” said Olson. “Where to?” asked the man. “You can suit yourself,” said Olson. So the cabin was again planted on a “desirable” lot of somebody’s,—and there it stands to-day, neat and trim, with a little wooden walk connecting its doorway with the plank sidewalk of the street. Alaska is, to be sure, a great free country! To-day has been wonderfully mild and comfortable. From time to time the rain has fallen gently. Over the water the clouds have drooped, hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save for the long swell—and this more to be heard upon the beach than seen. Rockwell and I at dusk walked the shore out to the point between the coves. We saw the glowing sky where the sun had set, the mountainous islands to the southward, and our own cove and its mountain ramparts—beautiful in the black and white of the spruces and the snow. If I but had my prepared canvas I’d make large studies of the many views from this point. Rockwell at dinner begged me repeatedly to have part of his junket besides my own. I wondered at it for although he is always considerate and polite this was almost too much. And in other ways I noticed his alacrity to be obliging. Later in the day he told me, after much embarrassment, that he had made up his mind to be nicer about everything and to do more for me,—and yet I had previously found no fault with him; how could I! So ends a day;—and again I think that in this country I would gladly live for years. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 134] <div class="figcenter chapter"> <ANTIMG id="i159" class="border" src="images/i159.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="352" alt="" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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