One Man's Wilderness, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Louis Proenneke

  Within a few days there will be an hour of sunlight at the cabin.

  February 5th. Minus forty-eight degrees.

  When I turned in at ten o’clock last night, it was fifty-four below zero. Now the moon is past the full. I think this will be the record low temperature for the winter.

  At these low temperatures my binoculars frost up so quickly that I can use them for only a few seconds at a time.

  The camp robbers were here, with streaks of frost back from their eyes. They didn’t appear very hungry, just disinterested balls of feathers decorating the spruce boughs. The magpie deserves a lot of credit. Robber that he is, he really works at making a living. He sits there and pecks away at that frozen moose meat in the fifty-below.

  Snow blowing from the peaks and ridges. In a very short time some of the high places lost their solid whiteness. That should make the sheep happy. Feed is being uncovered up there.

  I snowshoed across the lake to investigate a track below the rock face. There was a sun dog on either side of the sun as the overcast darkened. Trailing up through the deep snow, I was showered by more snow from the spruce. As soft and loose as the snow is, a snowshoe rabbit sinks in only about three inches. I startled a flock of spruce grouse and they exploded, knocking snow from the limbs in their panic. A few minutes later I struck the trail of a lynx. He sank deep and dragged his big feet toward the rock face. He had made those mystery tracks.

  My trail to the cabin was all but drifted shut in the wind and driving snow, but the thermometer back at the cabin read plus ten. The cold spell is broken.

  February 6th. Plus eighteen degrees. Quite a variation in twenty-four hours, from minus forty-eight to plus eighteen.

  The wind is roaring across the peaks. Snow is streaming from them like smoke from a grass fire. The thickness of the ice is now thirty-six inches, and the temperature of the water is thirty-one degrees.

  I nailed the forked roots of a spruce stump on the end of the ridge log above the door. I call it the spruce buck. It will make a good perch for the birds.

  I had to break out another jar of oatmeal. Surely I must hold a record for consuming the largest quantity of rolled oats in a few month’s time.

  February 12th. A strong breeze and plus twenty-five degrees.

  Today I would carve a big wooden spoon for Mary Alsworth in exchange for the heavy boot socks. I dug out a likely piece of stump stock from the deep snow and went to work. She wanted a spoon with lots of curve so that is the way it would be. While I worked, the camp robbers kept me company. When they come a-begging, I always have time to feed them. They seem to have found the spruce buck perch to their liking. A kettle of beans simmered away on the fire, and when they were done, so was the spoon.

  Trade goods—a wooden spoon for wool socks.

  The break in the cold gave my windows a chance to shed their buildup of ice today. Good to have them clean and dry again.

  February 13th. Snowing. From down the lake a strong wind is blowing big flakes. Plus thirty degrees.

  When the lake is open, you do not hear the wind in the mountains. Today the sound of it was like the roaring of a great waterfall.

  February 14th. The heat wave continues. Plus thirty degrees.

  An old visitor in his winter overcoat came to call today, his slender body doubling and stretching as he bounced over the snow. Out of respect for his new robe, I will call him an ermine instead of a weasel.

  I think I know where the squirrel went. The ermine must have killed him. I saw the ermine snake into the squirrel’s nest.

  A camp robber was inside the cabin. When I came through the door, he flew to the bunk post. I approached him. He didn’t fly. I picked him up and he struggled a bit in my hand. I held a meat scrap in front of him. First he pecked at my finger and then at the meat. For a moment he sat there in the palm of my hand. Then with a sudden takeoff he flew out the door to a spruce branch, where he sat very quietly as if puzzled by the experience.

  February 15th. Clear and calm and plus six degrees.

  A camp robber swooped inside and grabbed up a meat scrap while his two companions hesitated on the spruce buck. Those characters must have been talking things over.

  The ermine has taken over the squirrel’s quarters. He left as I opened the door, then returned cautiously, climbed back into the box, crawled into the nest, reached out to get a mouthful of moss, and closed his door. I tempted him with a meat scrap. A little wary at first, but his belly got the best of him. He latched on to the opposite end of the scrap, and when I didn’t let go with his tugging, he came right on up and went for my fingers. He’s not one to back into a corner. There’s a tiger in that little body.

  February 21st. Plus twenty-six degrees. Snowing and blowing.

  Twenty-seven inches of snow on the level. My snow shovel works well. My paths are beginning to look like small canyons with steep white walls.

  It’s a good thing that a weasel is not the size of a fox. He is a powerhouse for his size. The little ermine’s body can’t be more than ten inches long, yet he can wrestle a meat scrap that weighs several pounds. I saw him flashing in and out beneath the mortar tub where the moose meat was stored. Such a racket! Every now and then he would bolt right up straight and look around to see if he was attracting attention. The magpies give him a lot of room. He could easily kill one, and they don’t give him a chance to prove it. He is compact savagery. The way he moves he must have voltage in his veins instead of blood.

  I snowshoed the airstrip down and outlined it with small spruce boughs. Not really necessary, but the roughing up of the surface and the boughs help a pilot’s depth perception.

  February 23rd. Minus sixteen degrees.

  I was halfway down the lake when I heard a plane. Sure enough, it was the little Black Bird. Babe made two circles coming down and scooted in on my airstrip. I reached him just as he unpacked the last item. We turned the plane around facing the sun and covered the engine. He was in no hurry today.

  “You know when I left here in the cold last time,” he said, “I had oil temperature but no oil pressure until I climbed up high. Man, you live in a deep freeze!”

  All kinds of mail and packages. Some extra warm mittens and mukluks from brother Jake. Two small bags of nuts with a tag, stale nuts for squirrels.

  Right away I remembered a story Hope Carrithers liked to tell. A little boy was watching another little boy eat a big red apple. “Can I have the core?” he asked. The other boy answered, “Ain’t gonna be no core.” That is what I will tell the squirrels. They can’t read, and they don’t know nuts are for squirrels anyway.

  A new pair of Eddie Bauer shoe pacs from Spike. Cookies from home. Some special peanut brittle. My order from Sears, which included some new stovepipe. And last but not least, a big package from brother Jake—a cast-iron log rack for my fireplace.

  I popped some corn and broke out the can of peanut brittle. We swapped yarns and I worked on my outgoing mail while Babe lowered the can of peanut brittle.

  “Only that much,” he grinned, holding his thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. He said Mary would be tickled with the big wooden spoon, the stirring spoon, and the fork I had made for her.

  “That is a pretty little strip from the air,” he said, “and them spruce tips make the landing easier.”

  On the first flip of the prop the T-Craft engine started. “May bring the mission girls next trip,” he shouted, and off he whirred, climbing fast toward the ridge.

  I looked at my fancy mittens and mukluks. The challenge of keeping warm at Twin Lakes is gone even though the temperature may drop to seventy below. These hand and foot coverings have plugged the weakness in my protection.

  I don’t know why I waste time worrying about the squirrel. He’ll probably die of old age. I saw him bounce across the woodshed roof today. He must have been smart enough to move out just ahead of the weasel moving in.

  Somehow I never seem to tire of just standing and looking down the lake or up at the
mountains in the evening even if it is cold. If this is the way folks feel inside a church, I can understand why they go.

  I wish brother Jake could be here to see the red logs glowing on the cast-iron rack.

  February 27th. Plus twenty-six degrees and driving snow.

  While the kettle of lima beans was bubbling on the fire, I opened my tin-bending shop. I made some covers out of gas cans for my pans.

  I noticed that a piece of moose meat I had put out for the magpies was gone. While working in the woodshed, I heard a sharp little bark. It was the weasel in the woodpile trying to scare me away from the moose meat he had dragged there. Many times he barked, stabbing his head out from different places in the jumble of split spruce. When I left, there he was, sitting upright like a fence picket.

  February 28th. No wind. Plus twenty-eight degrees and overcast.

  February gone. That didn’t take long. Still the snow depth stays at twenty-seven inches at my checking station. It settles between snows.

  March 2nd. Plus eighteen degrees. With a full moon, I don’t understand why it continues so mild.

  Last night before turning in, I went out on the ice to cover the water hole and check the baited hook I had left dangling just off the bottom. The line pulled heavy with throbbing tugs. The gas lantern lighted the water to the bottom of the ice three feet down, and beyond. The fish was struggling down there, eyes aglow, a pale lake trout, fins and tail nearly white and the spots on its sides barely visible. It was icy to the touch as I flopped it out on the snow.

  I was anxious to see what the trout measured so I hurried to the cabin. A good sixteen inches. I spilled water into my dish pan and put the fish into it. It struggled to swim, trying to turn end for end. I decided that a beautiful trout like this belonged sixty feet down in the clear, cold water of the lake. I couldn’t see it browning in the skillet.

  Gently I slipped the trout through the thin skin of ice covering most of the waterhole. Around and around it swam, attracted to the bright light. I left, and when I returned a while later it was gone. No doubt as the trout descended once more into the blackness, it felt as if it had been to the moon and back.

  The snow was in good shape for a trip and the weather was fairing up, so off I went on the webs, down the lake. I could barely see the weave of my last snowshoe trail, and it was important that I follow it. Save the effort of breaking a new trail in the deep snow. I soon came upon the tracks of a wolverine crossing from Low Pass Creek over to Emerson Creek. That animal covers a lot of miles. No doubt it had come from the valley of the Kigik.

  Moonlight inspired photography.

  I found some caribou, too. They were in single file crossing a slide of loose rock that the winds had blown bare. Very few antlers in the bunch. One of them had only one antler. I saw him shake his head as if trying to get rid of it.

  The connecting stream was nearly closed. This was surprising when it was wide open at fifty below. It must have been the big wind after the last snow that did it. The water was cold enough to freeze, and did when wind blown snow choked the flow.

  Two sheep were etched sharply on a crag against a salmon-colored sunset.

  My birds greeted me when I returned. One took a meat scrap out of my hand, then pecked me on the finger as much as to say, “Who’s afraid?”

  March 3rd. Overcast and plus twenty-seven degrees. Snow curling from the peaks like smoke.

  Sunlight bathing my cabin at ten-fifteen. This had not happened in several months. There was that big golden ball breaking through the overcast, high enough to shine through the deep gunsight notch on the shoulder of Cowgill Peak. Soon it winked out again behind the slant of boulders. At twelve-ten it came out again just below the peak. A few more days and there will be sunshine on the logs from ten o’clock to five-thirty.

  Tonight the full moon is trying to find holes in the cloud cover.

  March 4th. Plus twenty-four degrees.

  A trip up the lake on this very clear day. Rocks rattling down the mountains now and then were the first hints of spring. I glassed the slopes for bear tracks but saw none. A fresh wolverine track was headed my way. Running his circuit probably on both sides of me. Maybe I will catch sight of him yet. Very warm in the sun but cool in the shadow of the mountain as I snowshoed back to the cabin.

  A stranger was perched near the top of a spruce. Gray and round headed, big yellow eyes—a hawk owl. He dropped silently from his lookout, and in a long swoop, glided up country with a camp robber in hot pursuit.

  March 5th. Plus twenty-six degrees.

  The track of the wolverine again, this time behind the cabin at the foot of the hump in the spruce timber. Headed up country in his usual sidewise lope. I followed him for a spell. Here he would slow to a walk to investigate beneath low hanging branches or a blowdown, and then off again on the trot. He makes his living on what others leave behind. He leaves his sign but I never see this phantom of the wilderness.

  A strong wind makes this evening a good one to appreciate my shelter.

  March 10th. Plus thirty-two degrees. This weather will mess around until it is too late to get cold again until next winter.

  I was washing dishes when I heard a warbling call, like a cabin robber but much louder. It was a bird I had never seen before, light gray over all, with darker back and tail. A black strip ran from the base of its slightly curved beak right through its eye like a mask. My bird book says it’s a Northwestern shrike.

  Easy pickings for the sheep now, as much of the big pasture is free of snow.

  The sound of a plane interrupted my wood splitting. Slipping into Twin Lakes International Airport was the little black plane. I hadn’t expected Babe for a week, and my clean-up of the cabin not complete!

  Where were the mission girls? He would bring them next trip. Lots of mail and packages.

  Brother Jake must come up here and help me eat these groceries he sends. Here’s a box of Band-Aids in case I tangle with a bear. Some burn ointment for the bright days ahead. And a bottle of aspirins for a broken leg. How about that?

  I finished my outgoing mail about the same time Babe finished the popcorn. Nice weather down at Lake Clark. The rivers were opening up. Airfield at Iliamna in bad shape and no mail from there in a week.

  Babe was thinking seriously of building a log chicken house. From the number of questions about logs and putting them together, I suspect all I have to do is hint and I would have a job.

  Babe reminded me that caribou season closes March 31st. When he came again, we might look for one.

  I gave him clearance for takeoff, and off he went in a swirl of snow.

  With all this gear I have been accumulating, that cache is a must. Spike’s cabin can’t take much more.

  I heard a fly buzzing around. It landed on a log to soak up the sun. I hung the thermometer next to it. The mercury stopped climbing at seventy-six degrees. In the shade it read forty-two degrees.

  I mended my snowshoes. They really needed attention. Wet snow ruins the webs in no time.

  March 11th. Plus fifteen degrees.

  I am lakebound until my snowshoe webbings dry tight as a drum head. It is impossible to travel in the brush without them. I have given the webs a coating of polyurethane.

  A good day to catch up on the woodpile.

  March 12th. Plus twenty-three degrees. Another few inches of snow during the night.

  I have been curious to see how much ice there is on the lower lake. Packing my ice chisel and shovel, I headed for my experimental area. The top six inches of the lake ice seem to be the hardest. Farther down I made good time. Forty-four inches when I broke through. Eight inches more than the upper lake. Satisfied with what I had learned, I headed back to the cabin for lima beans and sourdough biscuits.

  March 13th. Plus sixteen. Snowing.

  Today was the day to give that fancy can of Sears polyurethane varnish a workout. I kept the fireplace going and the door open for good ventilation. Everything that could take varnish got the full treatm
ent—the counter, the table, the shelves, the window ledges, the wash bench. They all took on a shiny look. By midafternoon everything was dry, and I put things back where they belonged. Let those mission girls come now!

  The lake is beginning to complain again after a long quiet spell.

  March 15th. Clear, calm, and minus twenty-eight degrees. Spring five days away, but this country doesn’t know it.

  A good day to try out my G.I. mukluks and mittens. Nothing spectacular appeared during my trip along the slopes. No big game at all, a few spruce grouse and some ptarmigan. I saw the tracks of a lynx and porcupine tracks in the big cottonwood grove. I can do without porcupines. Their teeth ruin the handles of tools left in the wrong places.

  Best dressed man in the frost.

  The connecting stream is now open end to end.

  I must give the mukluks and the mittens a high performance rating.

  March 16th. Clear and calm. Minus twenty-two degrees. A veil of overcast is robbing the sun of its power.

  Last night at ten o’clock I saw streaks in the night sky to the north and the northeast. I put on my cold-weather clothes and went out on the ice to watch the show. It was the best I have seen. A weaving curtain of green hung over the Glacier Creek country, spreading large one moment and shrinking small the next. Streaks of red, yellow, and green shot like searchlight beams to a point overhead. Clouds of colored light like brilliant fog patches blinked on and off. All alone in the subzero cold, with the heavens on fire and the ice cracking and crashing around me. A savage scene, and one to remember.

  March 19th. Plus twenty-seven degrees. Dancing flakes of snow beneath a gray sky.

  I accomplished something today. At last all the camp robbers will take scraps from my fingers. Today the old veteran with the spots on his head decided to get into the act. He had been watching his two companions from his perch on the spruce-buck horns just above my head. His mind and body seemed willing to take the plunge toward the scrap I held out to him, but his feet wouldn’t let go of the perch. He gyrated and nearly lost his balance. Finally he dropped to my hand for a split second and left in panic with the meat scrap. It will be easier next time.