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Wilderness; A Journal Of Quiet Adventure In Alaska

<h2>CHAPTER IV WINTER</h2> Endlessly, day after day, the journal goes on recording a dreary monotony of rain and cloud. Who has ever dwelt so entirely alone that the most living things in all the universe about are wind and rain and snow? Where the elements dominate and control your life, where at getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day between you question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will of the mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, stand barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God’s will for one more whole, long day of life. “Ah God! it rains again.” And sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man or curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy-[Pg 68]weather chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather garments. That is destiny. Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of weather with a battle cry, worked hard,—and then made up for outdoor dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors,—dry, cozy warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do. We have reached late fall—for northern latitudes. The sky is brooding ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing in upon us. We’re driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw the great drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them high. Calk tight with hemp the cabin’s windward eaves so that no breath of wind can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the shelf. Set up the far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you warm,—warm feet in bed and a warm back while painting. Patch up the poor, storm-battered paper roof,—two or three holes we find and we are sure it leaks from twenty. About the cabin pile the hemlock boughs, dense-leafed and warm, making a green slope almost to the eaves. Now it looks cozy! Outside and in the last is done to make us ready for the winter’s worst, and just in time! It is the evening of October twenty-second and the feathery snow has just begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in. “Well, well,” he cries, “how’s this! How does our winter suit you?” It suits us perfectly. The house is warm, Rockwell’s in bed, and I am reading “Treasure Island” to him. “What are you going to make of him?” asked Olson that night speaking of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the pot for baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <div class="verse00">“‘Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief,</div> <div class="verse00">Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.’</div> </div></div> How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster’s life?” [Pg 69] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i094" class="border" src="images/i094.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="484" alt="" /> ON THE HEIGHT </div> [Pg 71] Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence lovelier far than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a man could reach. A child could make a paradise of earth. Life is so simple! Unerringly he follows his desires making the greatest choices first, then onward into a narrowing pathway until the true goal is reached. How can one preach of beauty or teach another wisdom. These things are of an infinite nature, and in every one of us in just proportion. There is no priesthood of the truth. We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I,—the world of the books we read,—an always changing one, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Treasure Island,” the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, “Water Babies,” and the glorious Celtic past,—Rockwell’s own world of fancy, kingdom of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws,—and my created land of striding heroes and poor fate-bound men—real as I have painted them or to me nothing is,—and then all round about our common, daily, island-world, itself more wonderful than we have half a notion of. Is it to be believed that we are here alone, this boy and I, far north out on an island wilderness, seagirt on a terrific coast! It’s as we pictured it and wanted it a year and more ago,—yes, dreams come true. And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has begun. Short notes in the journal mark “Treasure Island’s” swift passage. Then enter “Water Babies!” “Just after Rockwell’s heart and mine,” I have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his friends,—a warning to the snob in literature. How it did weary us and madden us, his English-gentry pride,—unless we outright laughed. “At last it’s finished. That’s an event. When Kingsley isn’t showing off he’s moralizing, and between his religious cant and his English snobbery he is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment,[Pg 72] quite unendurable. So to-night we read from ‘Andersen’s Fairy Tales’—forever lovely and true.” Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong, and fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action they like, the deed—not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga form is best of all,—life as it happens, neither right nor wrong, words that they can understand, things they can comprehend, interesting facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the child that half of “Robinson Crusoe” and three quarters of the smug family from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure adventure that is there. As for adventure,—that is relative. Where little happens and the gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow. You’re stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world. The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal water of our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining bodies into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their gleaming, white patch under water,—there’s a thrill! The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in the bay, their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water with a sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, frantic, wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the thunder sound and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is beating on the sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. That was a drama for Fox Islanders. And later the poor magpie’s death. Real tears were shed from a poor boy’s half-broken heart. Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They’re on the search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest. [Pg 73] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i098" class="border" src="images/i098.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="472" alt="" /> THE DAY’S WORK </div> [Pg 75] There is mystery! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moorings, or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she’d been stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on some island, drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know. A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build for him a cozy home—he doesn’t like it much but still he should. We care for him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. Then at last one day when we’d pastured him in freedom out in the new fallen snow, trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut in and spoiled the trail and he was lost to us. Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! How many times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence Caine’s Head is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily. The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that maddening beast, eats up one corner of our broom. I throw a heavy armful of kindling wood into his face—and he just sneezes. But Rockwell plays with the goats as if they’re human, or rather, as if he were goat. They half believe it, he has told me,—and, Rockwell, so do I. <h3>Sunday, November third.</h3> To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest wind. The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond description. I painted in-and out-of-doors continuously all the day except when Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have one’s work on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming green sea and the fairy mountains. Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet. Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense and white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine’s Head, the wash of a storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain for[Pg 76] Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how many score of times we peered through the little panes of our west window never to find the thing we sought for. I’ve loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head and there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson! This is November sixth,—nine days away! “The war is over,” cried Olson as he landed. By all that’s holy in life may the world have found through its mad war at least some fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness.... Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is asleep, the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors.... And now instead of bed I’ll stir the fire and begin my work. <h3>Thursday, November seventh.</h3> A true winter’s day with the snow deep on the ground and the profound and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be sensed even in this ever silent place. At earliest daylight began a heavy thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. It occurred intermittently throughout the morning.... I did the washing, using Olson’s washboard and getting the clothes nearly white. Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who asked him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he replied: “You damn fools, you don’t understand an artist at all. Do you suppose Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and women hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone.” “Well, what does he paint?” “That’s his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there [Pg 79]on a picture, and next time I see it’s been changed to a lake or something else.” <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i102" class="border" src="images/i102.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="423" alt="" /> MEAL TIME </div> One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most wants, his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take notice of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he brought us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward had rejoiced for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. I told Olson that the authorities might still come and remove me. He flared up, “I’d like to see them try it! We could take to the mountains with guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing again.” And then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked for days and weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves and at last run them to earth,—one of his most thrilling and, I believe, absolutely true stories of his adventures. At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the echo from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden by the snowstorm. Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of his. It’s a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer spelling. Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer and then, after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a chapter of the life of Blake. <h3>Friday, November eighth.</h3> It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father—and it looks ever so fine. Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our cabin and blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking yield,—and then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread that a board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen[Pg 80] with a crash and clatter,—and Rockwell sleeps on! The wind does blow to-night, and it doesn’t stop outside the walls of the cabin either. My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah! the room is comfortable and warm. This morning, it being at first wondrously fair, Rockwell and I set out for a boat ride. But what with the fussing of installing our motor and the launching of our cumbersome boat the wind was given time to rise and spoil the day for us. But we went out into the bay and played in the waves to see what the north wind could do. The chop was devilish, short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to another with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath,—and then running up onto a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak landing with a splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with water. In a calmer spot I stopped the engine and sketched our island; after which we rowed home. The rest of the day we worked on the motor—first to find out why she wouldn’t run, then, having found and fixed that, to put other parts in still better order, and then, by far the longest time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the course of our fixing we had broken. Rockwell’s in bed, asleep, dreaming of the little, wild nightingale that sang of freedom to that poor, unhappy Chinese Emperor; while far from here in streets and towns the tin nightingale of law-made liberty charms the world. And it’s now my reading time, my time for bread and jam and a soft-cushioned back. The days run by, true winter days, snow, cold, and wind,—what wind! It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts sweep upon us roaring as they come; flying twigs and ice beat on the roof, the boards creak and groan under the wind’s weight, the lamp flutters, moss is driven in and falls upon my work-table, the canvas over our bed flaps,—and then in a moment the wind is gone and the [Pg 83]world is still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far off forest roar. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i106" class="border" src="images/i106.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="460" alt="" /> DAY’S END </div> Olson is full of treats. His latest was in pleasant violation of the law. From a bottle of pale liquid half filled with raisins he poured me a drink, mixing it with an equal amount of ginger ale and a dash of sugar. It tasted pretty good, quite thrilling in fact. “What is it?” I asked. “Pure alcohol,” he said, smacking his lips. Olson then launched forth on confidential advice, “from one trapper to another,” on how to trap men,—in my case rich patrons. He has my need of them quite upon his mind. Olson’s eggs, by the way, taste good enough. (They gave him in Seward twenty-four dozen bad eggs to bring out for the foxes.) We have eaten a dozen. To-day I cracked seventeen to find six for dinner. Onion omelette is the fashion to cook them in. Rockwell pronounces them delicious and—well—so do I. Hard, hard at work, little play, not too much sleep. The wind blows ceaselessly. Rockwell is forever good,—industrious, kind, and happy. He reads now quite freely from any book. Drawing has become a natural and regular occupation for him, almost a recreation—for he can draw in both a serious and a humorous vein. At this moment he’s waiting in bed for some music and another Andersen fairy tale. Another day has gone and a new morning is hours on its way. Out in the moonlit night strained, tired eyes open wide and are made clear again, cramped knees must dance in the crisp air, the curved spine bends backward as the upstretched arms describe that superb embracing gesture of the good-night yawn. November the thirteenth! how time sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon must cross again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin corner. I shiver and—go to bed. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 84] <div class="figcenter chapter"> <ANTIMG id="i109" class="border" src="images/i109.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="279" alt="" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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