I stand upon the afterdeck of the ship. The lines that had held me to the shore
are cast off. I am aboard the ferry boat Columbia setting forth through the
inland passage of Southeast Alaska on route to a distant island in Resurrection
Bay. The ship swings around to the north. Shadows overturn the light. The
past vanishing into dream. Some young native boys laugh and wrestle upon the
deck. They are home in these waters. Wide eyed travelers begin to wander and
explore the vessel. I leave the stern for the bow. The past gives way to the
future. I am going to travel these waters with a paint brush in my hand.
Petersburg, Juneau, Sitka, Skagway, Kodiak, Seward. It's a long haul, two
thousand miles, and where and what I paint will be like stepping stones across a
wide expanse of the unknown. We are passing along the wondrous and wild
Vancouver Island which seems to go north forever. Ships pass by heading
southward. I am nostalgic for their return and I have just begun. On the bow
islands emerge. Blue ovals shimmering on the horizon. It is the beginning of the
great Alexander Archipelago. A thousand mysterious islands jostling in the
wilderness and the Columbia heading straight towards them like a great leviathan
full of Jonah's. The passengers are settling in. Some to the deck with sleeping
bags, some to the cabins below, some to the bar. I linger upon the deck as the
sun scorches the glassy sea. It's almost midnight. I am feeling the weight of
the empty space all around. There before my eyes an orange life ring hanging on
the rail. Above me a life boat. In the expanding uncertainty I find refuge in
symbol. I open my tin watercolor box. I paint. Into the Archipelago
The morning dawns before your eyes can even close. You cross Dixon Entrance on a breathless sea. To the east the Misty Fjords appear in layered patterns against the rising sun. The perfect silhouette of mountain range upon mountain range,
display their depth in such subtlety as to make you weep at their clarity. They
are perfect and just within reach, yet so far away. They tease you with a
fairyland kind of beauty. Kingdoms afar seen from a magic gondola. Brass
telescopes lifted to unconquered shores. You try and take it in. The paint
brush spills color down quickly in hopes of capturing a vision passing. You are
secured upon the decks of this boat destined to follow its path and must let the
wonders pass. There is now an endless stream of images coming forth that will
drop your jaw and suspend your disbelief as few things can ever do. Three orcas
spotted to the starboard. Clouds appear in the distance. Tongass National
Forest awaits. It is a rainforest and you are bearing down on it from under
delightfully sunny skies. It feels as though you have been at sea for a lifetime
and yet is but a day. The eye in one swallow can take in five hundred square
miles of uninhabited land. Follow the shorelines and you dip in and out of
countless bays and coves. Peer into the wild and unimaginably green meadow
valleys and see at their end more mountains rising to yet greater heights. As
Prince of Whales Island emerges to the west the clouds and mist thicken. Where
you had clarity of distance before you, now have the ethereal wonder of water in
the air. Changing dew points creating stratified layers of mist draping
themselves over ridges and into fjords and
across the water. Swirling like
ghosts and dancers against the sodden green stands of spruce and cedar. It’s as
though we traveled to the other side of the world. The sunny vessel of our
departure is now a fog enshrouded ghost ship with lanterns burning green and
red. Ketchikan appears out of the grey light. It looks foreign and out of
place. Float planes roar across the water beneath a low dark ceiling. Through
the pouring rain an ill defined mass of boats and buildings hunker along the
channel. Here they measure rain in feet, not inches. The Columbia is impatient
with this harbor and soon pulls away. Cargo and cars offloaded. We sail on. The
night falls early as the rain lays heavy upon the decks. Those of us in tents
tighten our canvas and take refuge from the immensity of this voyage with deep
sleep. The morning dawns in a silver fog. The boat has slowed. There is clamor
to the rail. We are suspended in a sea of fog that rises from the water to
within three feet of our stance. We gaze over this ocean of vaporized air to see
tiny islands afloat with twisted trees rising like masts of ancient ships. It’s
a wonder to behold. Explorers lost in time. I stand on the deck with watercolor
journal in hand and drip colors onto the paper. They fall in the moist air in
playful mimicry to the astonishment floating past. I am rereading Rockwell
Kent's richly illustrated 1918 account of seven months lived on Fox Island in
Resurrection Bay. "Wilderness. A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska" My
mother had given me a signed copy upon graduation from college. Thirty years ago
I first ventured to Alaska, inspired by his writing. Working the deck of fishing
boat, I only passed this mythic island with a long gaze. This time my course is
set directly for its shore. The heading due north, the navigational compass to
be calibrated by the meandering path of a painter in search of motifs. And so
the Columbia slipped into its third day. We eased into Wrangell in the late
morning. Here a tiny unassuming little Alaskan town set gently against a small
mountain. It called out to me but my ticket read Petersburg
and that was the
next port of call. The Wrangell narrows stands between these towns. Sixty buoys
line the shallow narrow passage and the Columbia, the largest and one of the
fastest boats in the Alaska Marine Highway system is about to make a slalom run
with little margin for error over a 22 mile course. Its all hands on deck and
all passengers riveted to the bow. We feel the trees and rocks on either side,
the stern wake churning hard to starboard and then to port, the boat leaning
back and forth, and then all too soon we seem to burst out into a wider calmer
channel and there on the far bank the bustling little fishing town of
Petersburg. A few canneries line the dock, the harbor a clutter of boats,
buildings teetering on wooden piers. Unassuming houses climb a small hill
beyond. Frederick Sound is just out of the channel and the menacing rock toothed
peak The Devils Thumb, towers in the distance. Petersburg is my first
landfall. In the inevitable course of rain and mist and a reticent sun that
would follow, I began to experience extremities of emotion brought on by
weather. Trying to fix one's artistic judgment in this transient world is a
challenge. When it rained, I felt lost and worn down.
When it lightened, my
spirits bubbled up like from a spring. When the sun shown, I was absolutely
ecstatic. So it would be for me for the next four weeks. It would become a
never ending game of trying to see through the fog of weather and the fog of
doubt. The motifs found were to become stepping stones through the wilderness.
A mountain, a boat, a church, a harbor, an island, a volcano, a glacier...
never knowing where to go next, I would become like a blind man with a cane.
Tapping the world around me with a pencil. Scribbling down a sketch and washing
colored pigment down with a brush. I was in a constant state of rebirth and
termination. Salvation coming from faith in the commitment to follow one's hope
into the unseen, to set down upon a ragged piece of paper this unwavering
evidence. Sometimes the shear magnitude of the beauty being revealed would tremble the brush in my hands. It is a heart wrenching kind of beauty. A beauty
that persists beyond our human capacity to absorb it. It was my great good
fortune to find hospitality in Petersburg with local artists who graciously
opened their doors to allow me respite and
to afford me company on painting
excursions in the area. Here are real Alaskans who live in log cabins and
modern homes. They don't take any of it for granted and by their own hard
efforts have taught themselves to paint and create. Their's is an honest art,
born in love of subject as much as love of art. I felt as if I had already
arrived at Fox Island. I had found the cabin of good souls who fought back
against the immensity of the overpowering wilderness with playful creativity.
Art is a tool of survival. It brings light into the dark corners of our lives.
Weaving a nest in the wilds with Gods precious gifts is an inspiration that
follows one along. And so when I set off aboard the Malaspina bound for Sitka I
looked back into this little town with real sense that what I had hoped to find
on this journey was in much part already seen in the lives of those left behind.
Between the mountains and the mist of southeastern Alaska the northern sun
does make its appearances, if only for a moment. But when the sun burns
brightly the forms all around stand up and take notice. A startling clarity
overpowers your sensibilities. Everything is illuminated. The painters of the
Canadian Group of Seven understood this. They worked it into strong design. It
becomes a powerful setting for contemplation of the human narrative. In it the
human spirit becomes ennobled, as if every human alive were a walking miracle
amongst it. It's an illusive vision however, seen in moments as though in glass
darkly. The artist Rockwell Kent seemed to find a great expression of it in his
writings and illustrations. "But the wilderness is what man brings to it, no
more. If little Rockwell and I can live
in these vast silences beside the heartless ocean, perched high up on the peak
of the earth with the wind all about us, if we can stand here and not flee from
the terror of emptiness, it is because the wealth of our own souls warms the
mountains and sea, and peoples the great desolate spaces."
It is on the
borderline of the mystic. Wilderness. The word alone conjures up so many ideas
and feelings. It is certainly
present in these waters and playing with it is no trifle. One can not just drop
into it and expect to grasp it or even express it in any meaningful and truthful
way. It is a state of mind born in the forlorn valley of limited human
habitation. But in truth my passage northward is not a pure journey through the
wilderness. It is a porthole view seen from a passing sailor. I sail a well
traveled course, sketching postcards from afar. I am grasping at the fragments
of wonderment that plays before the eye. It is the liturgy of painting that
would sustain this sense of wonder. The Malaspina, with its fine oceanic
fairings steams along at 16 knots through more narrow passages of island and
reef. The water a pewter grey tinged with golden yellows. We slip through a
labyrinth of tufted glaciated green islands. Mountains appear and disappear. It
would seem these huge anonymous masses will stand there forever but the ship is
resolute in its forward motion and so the gigantic objects are moving as well
and if you are inclined to lay a pencil upon them you had better be fast and
sure. Here is where one will come to grips with simple forms and the essential
gestures. The route to Sitka is a continuation of the
circuitous path that
ferries must make as they wander in this labyrinth of islands. There is an
inevitable reiteration of form and color. It all rolls together in a green blue
mass of rounded island and jagged peaks. Curtains of mist diving over the
hilltops and old fishing boats on the way another ferry passing in the night. It
becomes a state of mind. One could cruise forever in this realm and never wake
up. And then come’s Sitka.
She is a jewel on the outer edge of this great archipelago. The Gulf of Alaska
shimmers outside her gates. The wide Pacific radiates a golden light. You feel
as if the compression of ten days on the inland side has suddenly been released
as you behold the open sea. Upon arrival however I found the little Russian
town in the midst of a major invasion by several white cruise ships which
towered in the bay like massive calved chunks of ice shorn from some
disintegrating glacier far away. It was as if had fallen through a crack in
the wilderness.
Clicking cameras and bright colored tourists everywhere with ice
cream cones and puzzled looks. We all look out of place. We don't live here and
yet there are more of us than them. I would camp on the outskirts of town by
the mouth of a river. Salmon jumping everywhere. Eagles crashing in and out of
the forest canopy in wild screeching madness. There were painting motifs in all
directions. Watercolor strokes snap down in rhythm with the jumping fish.
Across the bay the volcano Mt Edgecumbe floats on the green sea. A flat toped
cone that catches moisture and spins it into endless variations of blooming
clouds. Small sketches are scribbled down. Two days vanish along the cove. An
array of tiny islands spill about across the bay like a scattered necklace of
emeralds. Most with just enough room for a small cabin on stilts clinging to the
rocky edge. It rains 300 days a year in Sitka. My campground is soaked. I paint
from under the covering of the tent. The park ranger admires my paintings and
takes me on a tour to the top of Harbor Mountain. The finest view in all of
Alaska I am told. We peer out through a hole in the clouds to a faraway island
and a dim horizon. The trees at this elevation are twisted and stunted. It's a
mysterious garden that speaks of strength and resilience and a willingness to
persevere. Dropping back to the campground the ranger informs me that the brown
bears will soon be in the park, what with the all those fish beating on the
watery drum. In fact my camp site will probably be the first to close as it sits
beautifully at the mouth of the river and last season it hosted a big sow. I am
inclined to move into town. The cruise ships have sailed on. The old Sitka Hotel
on main street becomes home. With friendly locals this artist has no trouble
finding directions and places to touch down with brush and color. The harbor is
rich in maritime history. Wooden fishing boats seventy years old still bob along
the wharf. Trollers and halibut schooners with their fine lines are a happy
target for the rambling painter.
These boats are floating tales of woe and
wonder. One fine red haired fellow I found coiling long lines upon dock
explained his genesis as a fisherman as having begun in Cook Inlet with a
Russian from Ninilchik. Fourteen miles in the inlet they lit the stove.
Unfortunately the skipper had poured gasoline where diesel aught to have been.
"With a roaring fire burning through the cabin ceiling and the skippers beard
on fire, you learn a whole lot about fishing." I asked him for a tale of
success on the high seas. "I'll tell ya a tale of the best day of my fishing
career and to save you the trouble of yar next question, I'll include the worst
day as well." He told me of the 26000 pounds of halibut that had been pulled up
on two long line sets, the jubilation, the joy, and then of the leak in the hold
and failure of the bilge pump and the water that rushed in and the overloaded
boat that sank like a stone. And then he added, "Still, when I'm out there, all
I think of is getting back to land and
when I'm here, all I think of is getting
back to sea." The Russians elbowed their way into this land in the late
1700's. They were greeted by the Tlingits and not exactly with open arms. The
Russians led by Alex Baranov managed to get both boots on the ground soon enough
and set forth on the business of rounding up sea otters by the boatload and
relieving them of the their skin for big rubles. Today the little town chimes
with it's Russian history The green domed St Michael's church stands rebuilt
in the center of town surrounded by gift shops, lovely little galleries, bars
and bookstores. Not far off is the Sitka National Historic Park, an amazing
stand of totems bringing the native world into supernatural focus. Tall elegant
puppet like forms animated and alive haunt the forest trail that runs along the
shore. These elements kept my hands busy as I inevitably found myself chasing
them with one sketch upon another. One day I
wandered deep into brown bear country, fifteen miles out of town. I had hiked
to a small emerald green glacier lake along a precarious and difficult path.
I
was on guard in a narrow and tangled desolate place. I had been told of a
magical lake that would be any painters dream. Upon arrival I could only manage
with a trembling hand a sixty second sketch and quickly closed my notebook. I
was on edge. I was
alone at Medivici Lake. My eyes focused on the near and far. I stumbled my
way back down the darkened stream in haste. Mentally exhausted I arrived at the
beach and was told by a hatchery worker that the trail I was on had been closed
that very morning as a sow and her very young cub were in fact there at the
south end of the lake. I realized then that painting has a potential weakness
that should be discussed. Vulnerability. When you settle in to investigate a
subject with pencil and brush yo
u inevitably drift into an altered state of
consciousness. You are passing through the membrane of conscious time and
treading into the infinite. Everything around you is in motion and you are
hovering in place. The mind begins to float. Only the call and response holds
your attention, you become invisible to yourself and are truly alone in a
gracious solitude. But this is no game to play in bear country! With plenty
of boats and totems filling my notebook I bid farewell to this Russian Kingdom
by the sea. The ferry Taku was waiting at the dock and I had a ticket for Juneau. I will be there one long day waiting to connect to the ferry Matanuska
bound for Skagway in the early hours of the morning. I am exhausted as I
disembark for the day. It is 4:30 AM. Pouring rain. No poetic mist here. I
make my way into town. Nothing is open. Juneau is an old mining town clinging
to the side of a mountain. You look up to the street sign and you get vertigo
from the sheer mass that hovers overhead. There is something unsettling about
this place. I wander for an hour in the chilly morning. Finally a coffee
shop. There is only myself and a rather deeply wiskered fellow. "How long
you been in town?" he growls. I look at my watch "about an hour." "You working?"
he asked. "Yea, guess I am" "Well I'm up on the mountain living in a tent. My
old lady done left food out and the bear made pie of it all. She's gone now. I ain't got no use for gals like that. I warned her about that damned bear for two
weeks" "Gee, that's too bad," I murmured. Remembering how a bear might have
given my watercolor a bad review if I had lingered too long back there at Medivici Lake. He told me he was from Seattle. Had come to Juneau to
prospect. There was plenty more gold to be found and he intended to find it. I
bought him his coffee and grabbed my bag. To stay awake I was going for a hike
up to the abandoned "Last Chance" gold mine. In the overgrown forested hillside
two miles up the valley all I found were rusted metal buildings and shacks and
rail cars hanging on for memory's sake. Some tourists were panning in the creek.
A black bear was washing up the stream. I tried to paint but the fatigue and
rain kept my notebook in the bag. I walked slowly back into town thinking about
all that
gold when I came upon the St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. Built
in the 19th century in Siberia and reassembled in Juneau long ago. There is
something irresistible about these little onion domed cakes. They
live on in
fairytale. There is a
benevolence in the child like way they seem to inflate unto the heavens. I
stared at it, paid two bucks and went inside and came back
out. I was tired from
no sleep and a long gold mine walk with twelve more hours to kill in the rain
and dark of a miserable day in Juneau I really did not want to paint. But the
beauty of the pastel colored wooden church and a feeling of empty desperation
forced me to it. I sat
down upon the curb and set to work. A quick outline in pencil. Then I opened my
thirty year old dented Winsor Newton watercolor tin and with a thirsty brush
lifted deep wet colors to the surface. In the misty grey air colors were
dazzling on white. Creation was flickering against the old ruins of the day.
Something was being born out of nothing. A feeling of levitation. I play the
light and the dark, the cool and the warm. A call and response. I am energized
in the moment. Its as though I suddenly woke up. I am no longer a stranger
passing through. I am resident now. I am present. This was the only painting of
the day but it was enough to get me on the ferry in the middle of the night and
on my way to Skagway.
aggrandizement. The Great Northern Hotel!
Its billowing yellow onion dome adornment can be seen miles away. False front
store buildings advertise more than they can deliver. I make sure my yellows and
reds are in good supply. You can't help but feel for those thousands of Klondikers who rushed into this cul de sac way back when on their quest to
adventure and misery. They too would have marveled at the whales and high
glaciers and endless mist and islands on their voyage northward. They would have
been cozy on their crowded boats with dreams of prosperity that awaited them.
Here I must admit myself as one in their company. They looking for gold, I
looking for "goldness."
They to be delivered from the condition of their birth,
I from the endless existentialism that haunts the moment. We disembark and feel
the weight of the ground. It is hard and doesn't give as the sea. We must each
find our own footing now. The tale of gold is a compelling one. You can feel
the pull even still. The streams that run past seem to sparkle with something
hidden. Back in Sitka stands a bronze statue of a prospector with these words
engraved by poet Robert Service "There's gold and its haunting and haunting.
Its luring me on as of old, yet it isn't the gold that I 'm wanting so much as
just finding the gold. It’s the quiet big broad land way up yonder. Its the
forest where silence has its lease. Its the beauty that fills me with wonder.
Its the stillness
that fills me with peace" Indeed this is the substance of
things hoped for. You hope that for the thousands who struggled up through the
hard mountain passes beyond Skagway that they found the substance of gold
within, for little of the hard stuff was left for any of them. Not far from
Skagway are the ruins of the ghost town Dyea. So forlorn and washed out today
that not even ghosts call it home. I would go there to sketch the nothingness of
it all. Some empty pilings on the beach, a brown bear turning over a log. The
tide slowly coming back in. Off the point humpback whales roll in the green
glacier water. I reach down into the stream with my black enamel paint box to
refresh its pallet. The colors shimmer in the light. Its a gold pan now. I
see its function. The Yukon awaits just over the pass. I travel up.
The great interior of
Alaska beckons from beyond the horizon. The land turns dry and vivid . The
tangle of clouds and trees of the southeast there abruptly ends and the real
north begins. You stand out there alone feeling very small and your little
notebook feels even thinner. Its almost laughable to try and fix your gaze upon
it with a paint brush. It out scales your imagination. I sit by a small viridian
green lake and let
pencil lines softly sweep the distant valley. The wind is
chilly, rolling down from some hidden glacier. My colors dry on landing looking
pale and irresolute. Only the distant highway to Whitehorse mars the vast lake
filled valley below. I lower myself back down to Skagway past broken railway
bridges, lingering gold dredges and rusting locomotives in the fireweed. I must
now begin the last leg of my journey. I must exit the southeastern waters and
head out over the gulf bound for Prince William Sound and Kodiak. I return to
Juneau to await the sailing of the Kennecott.
A few miles north of Juneau, the Mendenhall Glacier. A beauty of ice and
diffused light hiding in the rain upon my approach. I see a grey lake and blue
green shapes floating about, but no glacier. Hundreds of visitors moving in the
foggy mist. A black bear cub sits atop a tree with a circle of onlookers. I
head down the trail to the far point. The rocks around me are gouged with the
scraping evidence of a ponderous glacier having been there. The markings lead my
eye across the lake back into the veil. I have my paints and I am prepared to
wait this one out. I make myself
Soon there appears a pink flicker on the waterline,
suddenly a vertical blue crack follows. The tongues of ice like claws on the
foot of a great polar bear reach out onto the lake. The veil is lifting. The
naked beauty is coming alive. A glacier is being born. I am painting before I
know it. The colors are unconscious expressions lifted into the air from my
splattered tin box. The ice is alive with color. Pale glorious shades of pink
and blue and turquoise and green. The clarity that suddenly arrives is
overwhelming . Three pages of my tiny notebook have now been filled. Inevitably
the curtain falls again. Its a silver light now without shadow. I move to a
higher ground. I wait This is a watercolorists dream and I know it. Slowly
the gauze of mist and rain
dissolves. I rush into the slender nuances of soft
rolling ice. The floating forms of lake ice appear to move dreamily like dancers
in a Russian Ballet. They are adorned with shimmering transparent gowns that
contour themselves to the melting forms beneath. I paint as if under a
spell. I hear people talking but it is as from an unknown tongue. I am painting
in a pure and crystalline world. The glacier is a flirtatious companion. The
wildest on this voyage and the most beautiful. We dance for two days in the rain
and mist. I bid farewell with a sigh. The Mendenhall is in dramatic retreat. I
may never see her again. In fact someday it may never ever be seen by anyone
again. It is a vanishing cloud of icy mystery that lays the story of our good
green planet before our eyes and begs to be understood. A monument of frozen
water dripping tears
deck and deliver a
small watercolor of the massive landmass in the fading light. I am reluctant to
retire to my cabin knowing that we are in a splendid evening. I sleep without
dream. From my windowless cabin I awaken. I open my door and peer out. The
hallway is filled with a blinding white light. I hasten to the deck. The sky is
brilliant blue. The ocean the same. There to the north the overwhelming site of
Mt St. Elias. Standing along a rugged line of massive peaks the mountain elbows
its brothers back from either side. 18006 feet high. It literally explodes
straight up from sea level. It is truly inspiring. A visual event. A
thunderclap to the eyes. A titanic whiteness. I am speechless as I struggle to
pull out my tiny little paint box. After three weeks in the narrow passages of
southeast Alaska under endless days of grey light and cascading mist it is a
revelation to arise to a bursting sunshine on the open sea. I am born yet again.
We are on the bounding main with only one port of call between here and Prince
William Sound. Yakutat. A small village with a long history. We tie tentatively
to a dock in a tiny bay with seemingly nothing around. Two surfers disembark in
our short layover. Waves along these wilderness beaches stretch beyond sight
with undiscovered perfection. I gather my colors and sit upon a road
overlooking the ferry. I have one hour. I don't draw anything in. I just
spill bold colors straight and pure.
They fall exactly where I intended and the
happy moment was captured just as the ferry let loose a loud blast from its fog
horn. I scramble for the dock and up the gang plank. The little remote village
disappears in the low flat land surrounding the harbor. We cross Yakutat Bay.
The advancing Hubbard Glacier is barely visible at its head. It is moving
forward against the tendency of its peers worldwide, cutting off fjords in the
process. It could change the course of local rivers.
Across the bay, the
mammoth Malaspina Glacier. Fifteen hundred square miles in a great arching
fan at the base of Mt St Elias. In the past twenty years its loss of ice mass
alone has contributed to the rise of ocean water worldwide by one half of one
percent. I takes us hours to pass this vast white apron just above sea level.
We sail on past Cape St Elias, a spectacular twelve hundred foot jagged tooth
just off Kayak Island. We are surely making our way along one of the wildest
and most spectacular coastlines in all the world. The sun is slipping towards
the horizon. Clouds begin to appear. There is a powerful exchange between light
and darkness. The last site of land seen in the fading light is the headland
of Resurrection Bay. It is a rich blue violet against the deep red fire of the
sun. There the end of my journey within site.
Kodiak is a no nonsense town. Its too far out on the edge. Like a miniature
continent, it lives alone. I am only there for the day as the Kennicott takes a
twelve hour rest. I was last out here thirty years ago looking for work on a
crab boat. Four days of rain and rejection. I remember well walking the docks
looking up to the high steel bows of some intimidating looking crab boats with
names like Armageddon, Tribulation, Apocalypse. Not exactly comforting
prospects. I would eventually end up on a nice little salmon purse seiner from
Homer named The Mistress.
On this visit I was relieved to be searching for
just a few small watercolors. I found my way to the Baranov Museum just
beneath the old
Russian Church. Parked in front along the dock is the fish processor, Star of
Kodiak. A converted liberty ship brought in after the disastrous tsunami of
1964. It’s a vintage working vessel brilliantly situated and maintained along
the dock. I found it to be a perfect blend of history and aesthetics of mid
twentieth century Kodiak . At least that's what I explained to the curator of
the little museum who wondered why in the world I would come all the way to
Kodiak to paint "that?" Twelve hours vanished in a twinkling. Painting has the
power to do that. You play with
it at your on your own peril.
knew that art was a valuable companion. It would take
me years to understand what that meant. But in this small account of an artist
in the wilds I would find inspiration for the study of art. Living alone on a
foreboding island off the rugged coast of Alaska is an ultimate metaphor for
life. It forces one to the interior. Art is a gift we all possess. It can
manifest itself in many ways. But like all things of the spirit it has to be
nurtured and studied and ultimately believed in to find flower in one's heart.
Against the nothingness of the wilderness there is no place for the soul to
hide. It has to come out one way or another. And so there is nothing stopping
the gift, except yourself. We see this in Kent's narrative. He braves the
lonely world to find companionship with the spirit of art. I arrive on the
beach of his fabled island with about fifteen kayakers. There is a lodge on the
island today. Little tour boats
world collapsed even more when the mountains across the bay disappeared in an
impenetrable grey. I could feel the desperation that Kent alluded to now and
then when the solitude would become overwhelming. I scrambled about the limited
space of the beach and trees. Kent's cabin is in ruins today. No comfort
there. Just a mossy stump and a few decaying logs. I leave that first day
feeling forlorn but with more respect than ever for Mr Kent's own force of
nature to spiritually survive in this place. I take a few days to investigate
the nearby Exit Glacier before venturing back to Fox Island. Exit Glacier picks
up where the Mendenhall left off. Pure magic.
These huge rivers of ice are
indeed a marvel to behold. They glow from within. Light blue sapphire from an
ancient time dripping slowly away. I scramble from my tent at first light to try
and see it from afar. It has left its mark. A sculpted valley. But now like
some white ghost of a defeated army wounded and without recourse, it slowly
pulls away. I begin a long hike up after it. Stopping for an hour here, thirty
minutes there. Just long enough to see the thing and make a record of that
I return to the island in the early morning. The beach is empty. I walk along
the rocky path. The sound of jingling stones beneath my boots ringing like a
hundred wind chimes in a breeze. Its not raining. I decide to walk to the far
end of the beach. From here at low tide you can see all the way down the bay to
Seward. I am beginning to feel the pleasure of this remote place. From this
vantage point the island looks bigger. More habitable. The clearing weather has
lifted my spirits. I see the tall mountains across the bay. The rugged Cape
Resurrection headland rears up from behind the island. I am not alone. I am part
of the wider wilderness. It is an unexpected comfort. I am now situated on a
rock with an open notebook. It is a sublime pleasure to be finally in this
moment and breathing in the same air that Rockwell Kent would have known so long
ago. The view identical. The weather the same. The ocean tide unfailing. I
watch as watercolor permeates the soft paper. Out of the chaos of the palette
emerges a more perfect order. A delicate arrangement of color and line. Form
born of light. There are moments when you watch the birth of a painting as
though your were only a witness watching from afar. They are rare indeed but
this was one of them. Its like a gift unwrapping for your eyes only. A private
moment when you feel at one with the world outside and the world within. I am
startled from my position as the tide is suddenly rising beneath me. I withdraw
higher across the slippery stones Now a mist swirls down from above. I take
refuge under an over hanging ledge and paint on. A freedom of spirit overtakes
me. I am happy on Kent's little island. I have built a cabin in my mind. The
tide creeps higher
. Its timeless pull however cannot quite reach my stance. I
smile for I sense the tide has brought me to this very spot and to this moment.
I have completed my course. I have taken the tools of art as far forth north as
I was able, beating my little tin drum all along the way. In the rain and long days, they have been with me a loyal companion. A friendly place to rest on
distant shores. I had found my path to Fox Island. As the small tour boat makes
its way into the cove, I gaze about one last time. What was for so many years
an illustrated dream was now suddenly real. But the vision had not been lost
because here at the very edge of the wilderness so little had changed. The motif
was intact. The muse still present.
The boat heads out around the southern point and on to Barwell Island. The surrounding rocks and cape are a foreboding collection of stark desolations.
Sheer cliffs stand resolute above the sea, uninhabitable. Castle walls disappear
into dark clouds above. Rookeries for the thousands of sea birds cling to the
gnarled face. A rain storm sweeps in from the gulf. Fox Island lingers in a
darkened silhouette against the golden light of Resurrection Bay. The tempest
finally overtakes it. The
island dissolves into a ghostly mist and then vanishes.