Sunday, March sixteenth.
With the full moon has come the most perfect calm. If it holds through to-morrow we shall leave the island. The past three days have been busy ones. Bitterly cold weather has prevailed with the wind unceasingly from the north—almost the coldest days of the winter. Still I did some painting out-of-doors every day until yesterday, trying hard to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite splendors of this place. Meanwhile our packing was carried on. We have made a thoroughly good job of it—I hope! But who can tell what strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates and bundles? But for a promise we had made Olson to go with him to Sunny Bay and Humpback Creek—on the eastern mainland—we’d have gone this day to Seward.
By noon the most perfect calm had settled upon the water. The sky was cloudless, and although really it was still very cold the bright sun looked like warmth—and that helped a lot. So Olson’s little engine, sputtering, stammering, stopping a great deal, carried us upon our trip. At Humpback Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high, perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round basin. The falls to-day were frozen and spread wide over the face of the cliff; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form. We had to hurry from here or be stranded by the rapidly retreating tide. Next we went to a spot on the bay where Rockwell and I might have lived had we not met Olson that fair Sunday in August. A little cabin stood there—open to the weather through doorway and window but otherwise snug and comfortable. Still, even with that great wonder, the fall, so near, that spot was not to be compared with our own Fox Island home. Next we went to Sunny Bay to visit the old trapper who has been wintering there—the same who stopped last fall at our island while on his way to camp. The old fellow came to meet us as we landed, a feeble, emaciated figure. He has been sick all winter and has done practically no trapping. What a forlorn latter end for a man! He drags himself about each day, cuts wood, lugs water, cooks, and when he stoops dizziness overcomes him. He sets a small circle of traps and drags himself around to tend them. His whole winter’s work is twelve ermine and two mink-thirty or forty dollars’ worth at the most. We offered to bring the old man back with us and from here on to Seward—but he preferred to stay there a few days longer.
And now I sit here with our packed household goods about me, empty walls and a dismantled home. Still we hardly realize that this beautiful adventure of ours has come to an end. The enchantment of it has been complete; it has possessed us to the very last. How long such happiness could hold, such quiet life continue to fill up the full measure of human desires only a long experience could teach. The still, deep cup of the wilderness is potent with wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved a lifetime forward to a finer youth.