One Man's Wilderness, 50th Anniversary Edition Read online

  Written by SAM KEITH

  from the Journals & Photographs of

  DICK PROENNEKE

  Foreword by NICK OFFERMAN

  Text © 1973, 1999 by Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke

  Photographs © 1973, 1999 by Richard Proenneke

  Book compilation © 2018 by Alaska Northwest Books®

  Map: Gray Mouse Graphics

  Illustrator: Roz Pape

  First Printing of the 50th Anniversary Edition 2018

  This edition:

  ISBN 9781513261645 (softbound)

  ISBN 9781513261805 (hardbound)

  ISBN 9781513261812 (e-book)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier edition as follows:

  Proenneke, Richard

  One man’s wilderness : an Alaskan odyssey / by Sam Keith ; from the journals and photograph collection of Richard Proenneke. - 26th anniversary ed.

  p.   cm.

  Originally published: Anchorage : Alaska Northwest Pub. Co. [1973]

  ISBN 978-0-88240-513-1 (softbound)

  ISBN 978-0-88240-942-9 (hardbound)

  ISBN 978-0-88240-840-8 (e-book)

  1. Proenneke, Richard—Diaries. 2. Pioneers—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region (north of Lake Clark)—Diaries. 3. Twin Lakes Region (Alaska)—Description and travel. 4. Twin Lakes Region (Alaska)—Pictorial works. 5. Frontier and pioneer life—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region

  6. Wilderness survival—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region I. Keith, Sam. II. Title.

  F912.T85P76 1999

  917.98’4-dc21  98-27704

  CIP

  Alaska Northwest Books®

  An imprint of

  GraphicArtsBooks.com

  Proudly distributed by Ingram Publisher Services.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  GRAPHIC ARTS BOOKS

  Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens

  Marketing Manager: Angela Zbornik

  Editor: Olivia Ngai

  Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger

  Contents

  Foreword by Nick Offerman

  Preface

  Map

  CHAPTER ONE

  Going In

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Birth of a Cabin

  CHAPTER THREE

  Camp Meat

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Freeze-up

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Breakup

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cloud Country

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Red Runt

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Chilikadrotna

  CHAPTER NINE

  Reflections

  CHAPTER TEN

  Until Another Spring

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Foreword

  BY NICK OFFERMAN

  When you woke up today, did you turn on a light? Did any of your breakfast come out of a refrigerator? Was it prepared over a gas or electric range, or an open fire? Let’s say you had bacon, eggs and toast with butter, with a glass of orange juice. Did you raise or grow any of these food items yourself, or did they come to you through the vast network of food providers in America? Did you enjoy that breakfast in some sort of shelter, like an apartment or a house? Were you comfortably seated for eating, maybe utilizing a chair and a table or a counter? The answers to these questions likely bespeak the incredible amount of convenience that most of us have come to enjoy in developed nations, often as a matter of course. We tend to take these luxuries for granted without giving them a great deal of thought, because that’s what civilization does, among other things. It takes scientific advances that would have blown the minds of our ancestors only a hundred years ago and turns them into mass-produced products and services so commonplace that they are simply unremarkable.

  One arguable advantage of this societal conditioning is that we are afforded more time for distractions. Because we can enjoy a glass of milk without needing to milk the cow, and we are generally not required to tend to our crops, livestock, or firewood, we can then turn our collective gaze toward more leisurely targets. This is time that we fill perhaps with reading books (ideally), or looking at social media on our phones or laptops, or watching entertainment in the form of online videos or television. Ironically, one of the most popular genres of reality entertainment across all of these mediums involves reading about or watching people perform the very tasks that modern technology is keeping us from needing to perform. Shows that require all sorts of cooking skills, shows about crafting timber frame buildings or simply improving one’s home with DIY techniques, shows about surviving in the wilderness, all seem to hold our fascination and provide a great deal of comfort. It’s a funny juxtaposition, but here we are.

  Which brings me to the subject at hand. To my way of thinking, this book (and the astonishingly good film that accompanies it, Alone In The Wilderness) is the original must-read DIY entertainment. There are elements in his writing that hearken back to Lewis and Clark or Laura Ingalls Wilder in their attention to the same unadulterated forests and streams, and the teeming wildlife inhabiting them. In the tradition of all great nature writing, this work understands the power of simple observation and reportage. In the early 1960s, Richard “Dick” Proenneke carved out for himself an astonishing way of living in the Alaskan wilderness, hundreds of miles from the nearest light bulb. I suppose there must be other people who have notched similar achievements over the years, but none of them kept so resplendent a journal while outing on such a damn fine display of competence, not to mention filming themselves on 8mm film stock with an incredible rate of success.

  While you read this, it’s fun to imagine him not only building his cabin and cache, woodshed, privy, doors, windows and furniture, all while maintaining a constant vigilance of the natural seasons around him and their effect upon the animal and plant life, regardless of their inclusion in his diet (or not) but also regularly setting up a small movie camera on a tripod, lining up his shot and rolling the camera, only to then hustle into the frame and commence the action of the scene, whether that was hewing logs, ripping boards, or feeding the camp-robbing birds. He would then have had to safely preserve his film from the effects of light and temperature until it would presumably be sent away with his mail in the bi-monthly visits from Babe in his tiny seaplane. An astonishing accomplishment from soup to nuts.

  Somehow Proenneke understood that his simple efforts—build shelter, stay warm, find/hunt food, observe nature, respect life—would be well worth documenting, and boy howdy was he right. If you like hearing a TV chef walk you through a recipe for enchiladas, just wait until you consume the creation of a log home in this volume, from the ground up. A notoriously talented diesel mechanic before relocating into the wild, the author displayed exceptional skill levels in woodworking, log/timber construction, engineering, chemistry, hunting, fishing, navigation, gardening, and journalism. He was dropped off next to an Alaskan lake with a bag of tools and a few minor conveniences, like matches and a sleeping bag, to see if he could survive for a year. As an experiment, that is pretty damn gutsy.

  Not only is this a ripping good read, but it also serves up valuable inspiration in our own comfortable lives, what with our indoor plumbing and laundry machines. I think about Proenneke’s statement that his time in his cabin was the most interesting and rich experience of his life, and I understand the
truth behind it: if you make the right choices, then a very simple life, devoid of distraction, has the best odds of being a happy life. Of course, that’s easy for him to say, sequestering himself away from civilization in a monastic existence. Some of us have to pursue simplicity and also deal with traffic, and answering emails, and so forth.

  As I sit to my breakfast this morning, consisting of eggs that I did not gather from my own henhouse, I think about those eggs and from whence they were procured. They are the most grass-fed, free-range eggs I can find at my local healthy grocery store. Eggs-wise, I feel victorious, and now I will build my day from there. I decide to listen to an audio book on my way to my woodshop—the excellent The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks—continuing my indulgence in delicious, well-written nonfiction, describing the art of living in and profiting by the beautiful and harsh elements of Mother Nature; in his case, raising sheep in the hills of northern England. When I get to my shop, I will be using tools like chisels and planes to continue crafting a batch of nine soprano ukuleles. You best believe I will be sharpening those tools with care before I touch them to the wood. I don’t have much in the way of birdsong at the shop, so I’ll put on some Talking Heads today. There. That sounds like a day that might see me satisfied by the time I drive back across town.

  Whatever it was that drove him to put his mettle to such an extreme test, it is we who benefit, by entertainment and by inspiration, thanks to these pages you hold in your hands. In a day and age when so few of us know how to do much with an axe and a tree, it is deeply comforting to read of the sure-handed actions of a man who did. And if you’re anything like me, it will goose you to get out your own chisel, as it were, and give it an extra honing before your next session making chips and shavings.

  Nick Offerman

  Los Angles, California (2018)

  Preface

  Although Dick Proenneke came originally from Primrose, Iowa, he will always be to me as truly Alaskan as willow brush and pointed spruce and jagged peaks against the sky. He embodies the spirit of the “Great Land.”

  I met Dick in 1952 when I worked as a civilian on the Kodiak Naval Base. Together we explored the many wild bays of Kodiak and Afognak Islands where the giant brown bear left his tracks in the black sand, climbed mountains to the clear lakes hidden beyond their green shoulders, gorged ourselves on fat butter clams steamed over campfires that flickered before shelters of driftwood and saplings of spruce.

  It was during these times that I observed and admired his wonderful gift of patience, his exceptional ability to improvise, his unbelievable stamina, and his consuming curiosity of all that was around him. Here was a remarkable blending of mechanical aptitude and genuine love of the natural scene, and even though I often saw him crawling over the complex machinery of the twentieth century, his coveralls smeared with grease, I always envisioned him in buckskins striding through the high mountain passes in the days of Lewis and Clark.

  If a tough job had to be done, Dick was the man to do it. A tireless worker, his talents as a diesel mechanic were not only in demand on the base but eagerly sought by the contractors in town. His knowledge, his imagination, and his tenacity were more than stubborn machinery could resist.

  His quiet efficiency fascinated me. I wondered about the days before he came to Alaska.

  While performing his duties as a carpenter in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was stricken with rheumatic fever. For six months he was bedridden. It kept him from shipping out into the fierce action that awaited in the Pacific, but more than anything else, it made him despise this weakness of his body that had temporarily disabled him. Once recovered, he set about proving to himself again and again that this repaired machine was going to outperform all others. He drove himself beyond common endurance. This former failing of his body became an obsession, and he mercilessly put it to the test at every opportunity.

  After the war he went to diesel school. He could have remained there as an instructor, but yearnings from the other side of his nature had to be answered. He worked on a ranch as a sheep camp tender in the high lonesome places of Oregon. As the result of a friend’s urging and the prospect of starting a cattle ranch on Shuyak Island, he came to Alaska in 1950.

  This dream soon vanished when the island proved unsuitable for the venture. A visit to a cattle spread on Kodiak further convinced the would-be partners that, for the time being at least, the Alaska ranch idea was out. They decided to go their separate ways.

  For several years Dick worked as a heavy equipment operator and repairman on the naval base at Kodiak. He worked long, hard hours in all kinds of weather for construction contractors. He fished commercially for salmon. He worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service at King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula. And though his living for the most part came from twisting bolts and welding steel, his heart was always in those faraway peaks that lost themselves in the clouds.

  A turning point in Dick’s life came when a retired Navy captain who had a cabin in a remote wilderness area invited Dick to spend a few weeks with him and his wife. They had to fly in over the Alaska Range. This was Dick’s introduction to the Twin Lakes country, and he knew the day he left it that one day he would return.

  The return came sooner than he expected. He was working for a contractor who was being pressured by union officials to hire only union men. Dick always felt he was his own man. His philosophy was simple: Do the job you must do and don’t worry about the hours or the conditions.

  Here was the excuse Dick needed. He was fifty years old. Why not retire? He could afford the move.

  “Get yourself off the hook,” he told the contractor. “That brush beyond the big hump has been calling for a long time and maybe I better answer while I’m able.”

  That was in the spring of 1967.

  He spent the following summer and fall in the Navy captain’s cabin at Twin Lakes. Scouting the area thoroughly, he finally selected his site and planned in detail the building of his cabin. In late July he cut his logs from a stand of white spruce, hauled them out of the timber, peeled them, piled them, and left them to weather through the harsh winter. Babe Alsworth, the bush pilot, flew him out just before freeze-up.

  Dick returned to Iowa to see his folks and do his customary good deeds around the small town. There in the “flatlander” country he awaited the rush of spring. He had cabin logs on his mind. His ears were tuned for the clamoring of the geese that would send him north again.

  Here is the account of a man living in an area as yet unspoiled by man’s advance, a land with all the purity that the land around us once held. Here is the account of a man living in a place where no roads lead in or out, where the nearest settlement is forty air miles over a rugged land spined with mountains, mattressed with muskeg, and gashed with river torrents.

  Using Dick Proenneke’s rough journals as a guide, and knowing him as well as I did, I have tried to get into his mind and reveal the “flavor” of the man. This is my tribute to him, a celebration of his being in tune with his surroundings and what he did alone with simple tools and ingenuity in carving his masterpiece out of the beyond.

  Sam Keith

  Duxbury, Massachusetts (1973)

  Looking up the lake from Low Pass

  I’m Scared of It All

  I’m scared of it all, God’s truth! so I am

  It’s too big and brutal for me.

  My nerve’s on the raw and I don’t give a damn

  For all the “hoorah” that I see.

  I’m pinned between subway and overhead train,

  Where automobillies sweep down:

  Oh, I want to go back to the timber again …

  I’m scared of the terrible town.

  I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;

  My rivers that flash into foam;

  My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;

  My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.

  My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,

  My ice fields agrind
and aglare:

  The city is deadfalled with danger and doom …

  I know that I’m safer up there.

  I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;

  All kinds and all classes I see.

  Yet never a one in the million I meet,

  Has the smile of a comrade to me.

  Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;

  Just tensed and intent on the goal:

  O God! but I’m lonesome … I wish I was back,

  Up there in the land of the Pole.

  I feel it’s all wrong, but I can’t tell you why …

  The palace, the hovel next door;

  The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,

  The crush and the rush and the roar.

  I’m trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;

  I cower in the crash and the glare;

  Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,

  For I know that it’s safer up there!

  I’m scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear

  The voice of the solitudes call!

  We’re nothing but brute with a little veneer,

  And nature is best after all.

  There’s tumult and terror abroad in the street;

  There’s menace and doom in the air;

  I’ve got to get back to my thousand mile beat;

  The trail where the cougar and silvertip meet;

  The snows and the campfire, with wolves at my feet …

  Goodbye, for it’s safer up there.

  From “Rhymes of a Rolling Stone,” by Robert W. Service.

  Reprinted by permission of Dodd Mead and Company,

  from the collected poems of Robert Service.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Going In

  I recognized the scrawl. I eased the point of a knife blade into the flap and slit open the envelope. It was the letter at last from Babe Alsworth, the bush pilot. “Come anytime. If we can’t land on the ice with wheels, we can find some open water for floats.” Typical Babe. Not a man to waste his words.