Wednesday, February nineteenth.
It rains and storms. But to-day we repaired the engine and we’re ready to start for Seward when it clears. Above every other thought now is the sad realization that our days on this beloved island are nearing an end. What is it that endears it so to a man near forty and a little boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. It may be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning backward from the crowded world that I have known and learned to fear, meet Rockwell in his forward march from nothing—to this. If that be so we have met only for a moment for such perfect sympathy. His love will pass on from this and mine will grow dissatisfied and wander still. But I think it’s otherwise. It seems that we have both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES—for the wilderness is nothing else. It is a kind of living mirror that gives back as its own all and only all that the imagination of a man brings to it. It is that which we believe it to be. So here we have stood, we two, and if we have not shuddered at the emptiness of the abyss and fled from its loneliness, it is because of the wealth of our own souls that filled the void with imagery, warmed it, and gave it speech and understanding. This vast, wild land we have made a child’s world and a man’s.
I know nothing in all life more beautiful than the perfect belief of Rockwell in his Paradise here. Unopposed, his romance has kindled every object on the homestead; so that now for hours he can steal about in the forest, on the beach, along the lake,—in absolute contentment, for it is wonderland itself. The “King’s road,” the “Giant’s path” where stand the gummy “ten-pound butter tree” and all the giants with whom Sir Lancelot must joust, the magpie’s grave marked with a cross, the otter’s cave, the marvelous frozen stream; those strange wild people, the Treaps, who visit these shores occasionally to hunt the white man for his skin as the white man has hunted their dear animals; rain-bears and wild-cat-eaters—appalling animals that inhabit the dark woods but are good friends to Rockwell. Every log and rotten stump, the gnarled trees, with or without “butter,” every mound and path, the rocks, the streams, each is a being in itself; and with those most living goats, and the brilliant magpies, the pretty, little, dingy sparrows, the glorious and virtuous porcupines, the black, black crows, the great and noble eagle, the rare spider and the rarer fly, and the wonderful, strong, sleek otters that leap in sport through the snow and coast down-hill, they make a world of romance that has thrilled one little boy to the very bottom of his soul. To live here, to accumulate about him more and more animals and shelter them from harm, to live forever or, if he must, grow old, and very old; here marry—not a Seward girl but one more beautiful—or an Indian!—here raise a great family—and here die. That now is the ideal of little Rockwell. And if we, his family, all of us, would count we must come here to him where with patriarchal magnificence and dignity he will care for us.
RUNNING WATER