CHRISTMAS
Thursday, December nineteenth.
This day is never to be forgotten, so beautiful, so calm, so still
with the earth and every branch and tree muffled in deep, feathery,
new-fallen snow. And all day the softest clouds have drifted lazily
over the heaven shrouding the land here and there in veils of falling
snow, while elsewhere or through the snow itself the sun shone. Golden
shadows, dazzling peaks, fairy tracery of branches against the blue
summer sea! It was a day to Live,--and work could be forgotten.
So Rockwell and I explored the woods, at first reverently treading one
path that the snow about us might still lie undisturbed. But soon the
cub in the boy broke out and he rolled in the deepest thickets, shook
the trees down upon himself, lay still in the snow for me to cover him
completely, washed his face till it was crimson, and wound up with a
naked snow-bath. I photographed him standing thus in the deep snow at
the water's edge with the mountains far off behind him. Then he dried
himself at the roaring fire we'd made ready and felt like a new
boy--if that can be imagined. We both sketched out-of-doors for a
little while in the morning like young lady amateurs. I tried it again
two or three times throughout the day with indifferent results; it was
too beautiful. We cut wood too, and that went with a zest. While
Rockwell dried himself after his bath I searched in the woods for a
Christmas tree and cut a fair-sized one at last for its top. Christmas
is right upon us now. To-night the cranberries stew on the stove.
Friday, December twentieth.
The beautiful snow is fast going under the falling rain! With only
five more days before Christmas it is probable we'll have little if
any snow on the ground then. A snowless Christmas in Alaska!
This day was as uneventful as could be. Part of the morning was
consumed in putting a new handle into the sledge hammer. It was too
dark to paint long, really hardly an hour of daylight. These days slip
by so easily and with so little accomplished! Only by burning midnight
oil can much be done.
Sunday, December twenty-second.
Both yesterday and to-day it has poured rain. They've not been
unpleasant days, however. Occasional let-ups have allowed us to cut
wood and get water without inconvenience. This morning Olson, fearing
that a continuance of the mild weather would melt the ice in the lake
and send his bags of fish to the bottom, went out to the center of the
lake where they hung suspended through a hole in the ice and brought
them in. But so precarious has the ice become that he carried a rope
and took me along in case of trouble. To get out upon the ice we had
to go some distance along the lake's shore.
Returning we missed meeting Rockwell who had gone to join us. Not for
some time did it occur to me to call him. It was well I did call. The
poor boy on not seeing us had suddenly concluded we were drowned. A
strip of water separated him from the ice. He was on the point of
wading into this at the moment I called him. He was still terribly
excited when he reached us.
Both days I have been occupied with humble, housewifely
duties,--baking, washing, mending, and now the cabin is adorned with
our drying clothes. Here where water must be carried so far it is the
wet days that are wash days. Darning is a wretched nuisance. We should
have socks enough to tide us over our stay here. Last night after
Rockwell had been put to bed I sat down and did two of the best
drawings I have made. At half past twelve I finished them, and then to
calm my elation a bit for sleep read in the "Odyssey." At this my
second reading of the book it's as intensely interesting--or more
so--than before. As a story it is incomparably better than the
"Iliad." To me it is full of suggestions for wonderful pictures.
Ten days from now it comes due for Olson to go to Seward. If only then
we have mild, calm weather! But as yet we have seen no steamer go to
Seward since early in the month. It looks as if the steamship
companies had combined to deprive Alaska of its Christmas mail and
freight in a policy of making the deadlock with the government over
the mail contracts intolerable. Meanwhile, instead of serving us, the
jaunty little naval cruisers that summered here in idleness doubtless
loaf away the winter months in comfortable southern ports.
[Illustration: CAIN]
Monday, December twenty-third.
Up to this morning the hard warm rain continued, and now the stars are
all out and it might be thought a night in spring. At eight-thirty I
walked over in sneakers and underwear for a moment's call on Olson,
but he had gone to bed. And now although we'll have no snow the
weather is fair for Christmas.
If Olson believes, as he says, that Christmas will pass as any other
day he is quite wrong. The tree waits to be set up and it will surely
be a thing of beauty blazing with its many candles in this somber log
interior. I've given up the idea of dressing Olson as Santa Claus in
goat's wool whiskers. Santa Claus without presents would move us to
tears. There are a few little gifts,--a pocketknife and a kitchen set
of knife, fork, and can-opener for Olson. An old broken fountain pen
for Rockwell, some sticks of candy,--and the dinner! What shall it be?
Wait!
It is midnight. I've just finished a good drawing. The lamp is about
at its accustomed low mark--yesterday it had to be filled twice! Those
nights when without a clock I sat up so late and to so uncertain an
hour I have discovered by the lamp and clock together to have been
really long. My bedtime then was after two or three o'clock--but I
arose later. To-day I finished a little picture for Olson and so did
Rockwell. These were forgotten in my list of presents as I've just
written it. I have shown in my picture the king of the island himself
striding out to feed the goats while Billy, rearing on his hind legs,
tries to steal the food on the way. Rockwell's picture is of Olson
surrounded by all the goats in a more peaceful mood. Olson's cabin is
in the background. I wish we had more to give the good old man. At any
rate he dines with us.
Christmas Eve!
We've cleaned house, stowed everything away upon shelves and hooks and
in corners, moved even my easel aside; decorated the roof timbers
with dense hemlock boughs, stowed quantities of wood behind the
stove--for there must be no work on that holiday--and now both
Rockwell and I are in a state of suppressed excitement over to-morrow.
What a strange thing! Nothing is coming to us, no change in any
respect in the routine of our lives but what we make ourselves,--and
yet the day looms so large and magnificent before us! I suppose the
greatest festivals of our lives are those at which we dance ourselves.
You need nothing from outside,--not even illusion. Certainly children
need to be given scarcely an idea to develop out of it an atmosphere
of mystery and expectation as real and thrilling to themselves as if
it rested upon true belief.
Well, the tree is ready, cut to length with a cross at the foot to
stand upon, and a cardboard and tin-foil star to hang at its top. And
now as to Christmas weather. This morning, as might just as well have
been expected, was again overcast. Toward evening light snow began to
fall. It soon turned to rain and the rain now has settled down to a
gentle, even, all-night-and-day pace. Let it snow or rain and grow
dark at midday! The better shall be our good Christmas cheer within.
This is the true Christmas land. The day _should_ be dark, the house
further overshadowed by the woods, tall and black. And there in the
midst of that somber, dreadful gloom the Christmas tree should blaze
in glory unrivaled by moon or sun or star.
Christmas Day on Fox Island.
It is mild; the ground is almost bare and a warm rain falls. First the
Christmas tree all dripping wet is brought into the house and set upon
its feet. It is nine feet and a half high and just touches the peak of
the cabin. There it stands and dries its leaves while Rockwell and I
prepare the feast.
[Illustration: SUPERMAN]
Both stoves are kept burning and the open door lets in the cool air.
Everything goes beautifully; the wood burns as it should, the oven
heats, the kettle boils, the beans stew, the bread browns in the oven
just right, and the new pudding sauce foams up as rich and delicious
as if instead of the first it were the hundredth time I'd made it. And
now everything is ready. The clock stands at a quarter to three. Night
has about fallen and lamp light is in the cabin.
"Run, Rockwell, out-of-doors and play awhile." Quickly I stow the
presents about the tree, hang sticks of candy from it, and light the
candles.
Rockwell runs for Mr. Olson, and just as they approach the cabin the
door opens and fairyland is revealed to them. It is wonderful. The
interior of the cabin is illuminated as never before, as perhaps no
cabin interior ever was among these wild mountains. Then all amazed
and wondering those two children come in. Who knows which is the more
entranced?
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!"
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
pocketknife. 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 he gets besides a pocketknife and the
broken fountain pen and sits on the bed looking at the things as if
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 and in it 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 each other's friendship, and Rockwell
and I tumble into bed.
The next day and the next it is mild, resting--the weather seems to
be--at this peaceful holiday season. We cut no wood and do little
work. We write long letters, both of us, and consume at meal-time the
food left over from Christmas. I read the "Odyssey," great story! Just
now I am past that magnificent slaughter of the wooers, else these
delayed pages would still be unwritten. A few more Odysseys to read
here in this wild place and one could forget the modern world and
return in manners and speech and thought to the heroic age. That
would be an adventure worth trying! Maybe we are not so deeply
permeated with the culture of to-day that we could not throw it off.
Surely the spirit of the heroes strikes home to our hearts as we read
of them in the ancient books.
Saturday, December twenty-eighth.
For the first time in days the sun has risen in a clear sky and shone
upon the mountains across from us. It is colder, for ice has formed
again on the tub of water out-of-doors. But there is a little wind.
I am writing in preparation for Olson's trip. He too is making ready.
Food for the foxes is on the stove for many days' feeding, his engine
gets a little burnishing--it's no insignificant voyage to Seward in
the winter. If only it holds out fair and calm until a steamer comes!
There's the hitch now. We have seen none go to Seward since the first
of the month.
To-morrow probably the Christmas tree must come down. The hemlock
trimmings shed all over the cabin till to-day I tore them out. Last
night we had our final lighting of the tree. Rockwell and I stood
out-of-doors and looked in at it. What a marvelous sight in the
wilderness. If only some hapless castaways had strayed in upon us
lured by that light! We sang Christmas carols out there in the dark,
did a Christmas dance on the shore, and then came in and while the
tree still burned told each other stories. Rockwell's story was about
the adventures of some children in the woods, full of thrilling
climaxes. It came by the yard. I told him of an Indian boy who,
longing for Christmas, went out into the dark woods at night and
closed his eyes. And how behind his closed eyes he found a world rich
in everything the other lacked. There was his Christmas tree and to it
came the wild animals. They got each a present, the mother porcupine a
box of little silken balls to stick onto her quills for decoration,
and the father porcupine a toothbrush because his large teeth were so
very yellow. After the story it was bedtime. Well ... this fair day
has passed, and with the night have come clouds and a cold gloom
foreboding snow. But I have learned to expect nothing of the weather
but what it gives us.
Sunday, December twenty-ninth.
Squirlie's birthday party. Squirlie is seated in a condensed milk box.
At his back hangs a brown sweater. About him stand his presents
consisting chiefly of feathers. The table is spread with the feast in
shells and the whole is brilliantly illuminated by a Christmas tree
candle. Long life to Squirlie and may he never fall to pieces nor be
devoured by moths!
Monday, December thirtieth.
Yesterday it rained gently, to-day it pours. I sit here with the door
open and the stove slumbering--such weather in this country that the
world believes to be an iceberg! But in Seward and on the mountains no
doubt it is snowing enough. To-day I made so good a drawing that I'm
sitting up as if the flight of time and the coming of morning were no
concern of mine. It is half-past twelve!
New Year's Eve! Tuesday. This is the tenth anniversary of Rockwell's
parents and I have kept it as well as I could, working all day upon a
drawing for his mother and to-night holding a kind of song service
with Rockwell. Rockwell, who at nine years has every reason to
celebrate to-day, however he may feel at twenty-nine, has written his
mother a sweet little letter. I'm terribly homesick to-night and don't
know what to say about it in these genial pages. It has been a solemn
day.
When Olson was here to-night I began from playing the flute to sing.
He was delighted and I continued. What a strange performance here
in the wilderness, a little boy, an old man, listening as I sing
loudly and solemnly to them without accompaniment. Olson brought us a
pan of goat's milk to-day, as he often does. I make junket of it and
it is a truly delicious dish, ever so much better than when made of
cow's milk. It resembles a jelly of pure cream.
[Illustration: THE NORTH WIND]
It has rained hard most of the day. At times a mist has hung in a band
halfway up the mountain's height across the bay. It is a remarkable
sight. To-night is as warm as any night in spring or autumn. It thaws
continually and even the ice that once covered the ground beneath the
snow is fast disappearing. The year goes out without a steamer having
been seen to come with the Christmas mail.
It is close to midnight. I have one secret resolution to make for the
new year and, that I may make it as earnestly and as truly as
possible, the stars and the black sky shall be my witness. And so with
the year nineteen hundred and eighteen I end this page.