A Northern Christmas (3 page)

Then Olson and I drink in deep solemnity a silent toast; and the old man says, “I'd give everything—yes, everything I have in the world to have your wife here now!”

FOX ISLAND, CHRISTMAS
1918

Olives               Pickles
Spaghetti a la Fox Island
Beans a la Resurrection Bay
Murphies en Casserole
Cranberry Sauce
Plum Pudding Magnifique
Sauce a la Alaska Rum
Demi Tasse
Nuts       Raisins       Bon-bons
Home Sweet Home Cider
—
Music by the German Band

And the presents are handed out. For Olson this picture from Rockwell. Ah, he thinks it's wonderful! Then for Rockwell this book—a surprise from Seward. Next for Olson a painting, a kitchen set, and a pocket-knife.
By this time he's quite overcome. It's the first Christmas he has ever had! And Rockwell, when he is handed two old copies of the “Geographic Magazine,” cries in amazement, “Why I thought I was to have no presents!” But in addition he gets a pocket-knife and the broken fountain pen and sits on the bed looking at the things as though they were the most wonderful of gifts.

Dinner is now set upon the table. Olson adjusts his glasses and reads the formal menu that lies at his place.

So we feast and have a jolly good time.

It is a true party and looks like one.
Rockwell and I are in clean white shirts, Olson is magnificent in a new flannel shirt and his Sunday trousers and waistcoat. He wears a silk tie with a gold nugget pin. He is shaven, and clipped about the ears. How grand he looks! The food is good and plentiful, the night is long, only the Christmas candles are short-lived and we extinguish them to save them for another time. Finally, as the night deepens, Olson leaves us amid mutual expressions of delight in one another's friendship, and Rockwell and I tumble into bed.

So ended Christmas on Fox Island. As life had been, so, after Christmas, it went on. With spring, too soon, the time for our enforced departure came. We left Fox Island. Tearfully, on the threshold of the world, I wrote, concluding
WILDERNESS:

And now at last it is over. Fox Island will soon become in our memories like a dream or vision, a remote experience too wonderful for the full liberty we knew there and the deep peace to be remembered or believed in as a real experience in life. It was for us life as it should be, serene and wholesome; love—but no hate, faith without disillusionment,
the absolute for the toiling hands of man and for his soaring spirit. Olson of the deep experience, strong, brave, generous and gentle like a child; and his island—like Paradise. Ah God,—and now the world again!

This is Book Number One in the series of the American Artists Group Gift Books. The type used for the text is twelve-point Cloister bold. The illustrations and the book jacket are by Rockwell Kent. Most of the text and pictures are from WILDERNESS, A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Grateful acknowledgement is made of the publisher's courtesy
.

ROCKWELL KENT (1882–1971) was one of America's most celebrated graphic artists. At the height of his career, during the 1930s and 1940s, his artwork appeared virtually everywhere. Although his illustrations for Shakespeare's
Complete Works
and
Moby Dick
may be his most famous artistic achievements, Kent also created the “random house” that, despite revision through the years, has been the colophon of that company since its inception in 1928. A highly vocal political activist, Kent's refusal to comply with McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities and his subsequent denunciation of the Vietnam War resulted in his general dismissal from the art world. All his travel books, including
N by E, Wilderness, Voyaging, Salamina
, and
Greenland Journal
, have appeared in limited editions since his death—a tribute to their perennial appeal.

DOUG CAPRA, who currently works as a seasonal ranger for the Kenai Fjords National Park, is the author of two books on Alaska history. His articles on Rockwell Kent have appeared in such publications as
Alaska
magazine and
The Kent Collector
. He lives in Seward, Alaska, with his wife and two children. Capra wrote the introduction to the 1996 edition of
Wilderness
, also published by Wesleyan University Press.