Such mild weather! With the fire nearly out it’s hot indoors to-night. A little snow, a little rain, but altogether a pleasant day. It’s always pleasant when I paint well. To-day I redeemed two straying pictures and they’re among the elect now. To-night a steamer entered from the westward, the Curaçao, long expected. She must have been here two or three days ago and since then been to Seldovia. With incredible slowness she crept over the water. What old hulks they do put onto this Alaska service.
PRISON BARS
Rockwell’s mothering of all things exceeded reason to-day. He put two sticks of wood on the fire after I had intended it to go out. I removed them, blazing merrily. “Don’t” cried Rockwell seriously, “you’ll hurt the fire’s feelings.”
Rockwell cleared off the boat to-day. Next we must dig her out. To-morrow the engine must be put in order. We must find a hole in the gasoline tank and solder it and then coax it into starting. It is on such jobs that whole precious days are wasted.
Rockwell loves every foot of this spot of land. To-night he spoke of the beauties of the lake, its steep wooded shores, clean and pebbly, and the one low, clear, and level spot where we approached the water. He had planned to live this summer the day long on the shores of the lake, naked, playing in and out of the water or paddling some craft about. I thought of putting up a tent in some mossy dell along the shore and letting Rockwell sleep there nights alone and learn early the wonders of a hermit’s life. And none of it is to be!
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.