One Man's Wilderness, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Louis Proenneke

  I don’t know what the answer is. In time man gets used to almost anything, but the problem seems to be that technology is advancing faster than he can adjust to it. I think it’s time we started applying the brakes, slowing down our greed and slowing down the world.

  I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure. They didn’t cost me a lot of money either. They just worked on my senses. Did you ever pick very large blueberries after a summer rain? Walk through a grove of cottonwoods, open like a park, and see the blue sky beyond the shimmering gold of the leaves? Pull on dry woolen socks after you’ve peeled off the wet ones? Come in out of the subzero and shiver yourself warm in front of a wood fire? The world is full of such things.

  I’ve watched many hunters come and go. I don’t begrudge a hunter his Dall ram if he climbs to the crags to get one and packs it down the mountain. If he does this, he has earned those curved horns to put up on his wall. Yet there are so many who have not earned what they proudly exhibit. Even though the hunt may have cost them thousands of dollars, they did not pay the full price for it.

  I have no doubt that to others I am an oddball in many ways. The Lord waited a little too long to put me on one of his worlds. I don’t like the look of progress, if that is what it’s called. I would have liked the beginnings better. That’s why this place has taken hold of me. It’s still in those early stages and man hasn’t left too many marks on the land. Surely I have been places up and down these mountains where other men have never been. How long before all this will change as the other places have changed?

  I’ve seen a lot of sights from this old spruce chunk, and have thought a lot of thoughts. The more I think about it, the better off I think I am. The crime rate up here is close to zero. I forget what it is like to be sick or have a cold. I don’t have bills coming in every month to pay for things I really don’t need. My legs and canoe provide my transportation. They take me as far as I care to go.

  To see game you must move a little and look a lot. What first appears to be a branch turns into that big caribou bull up there on the benches—I wonder what he thinks about? Is his brain just a blank as he lies there blinking in the sun and chewing his cud? I wonder if he feels as I do, that this small part of the world is enough to think about?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Until Another Spring

  September 21st. Forty-eight degrees. A gusty breeze down the lake that made the whitecaps toss.

  I told Babe on his last trip that I would go out on September twenty-fifth or the first good day after that. I intended to spend the winter Outside. Dad was not his active self and he could use another pair of hands.

  Babe allowed it was a good idea. “You’ll appreciate the wilderness more,” he said, “when you see that sick country again.”

  The first day of fall and halfway to the shortest day of the year. It hardly seems possible. There is a batch of chores to do. Get the canoe ready to go into storage, wash and dry the heavy clothes that will stay behind.

  There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you’re going is as good as where you’ve been.

  I watched the sun go down, and watched the flames it left on the clouds. In less than a week the sun will sink behind the pyramid mountain. I remembered when it disappeared behind that same peak on its journey to the longest day.

  September 22nd. Frost on the beach. Clear, calm, and thirty degrees.

  Today would be cleanup day. My first stop was Glacier Creek, where I buried some civilization scraps left behind by sheep hunters. Most hunters have poor housekeeping habits. Their wives must spoil them at home. Out here there is no one to pick up after them.

  Next stop the upper end. Much garbage to hide there as well, ration boxes, tin cans, and plastic wrappers.

  After being deserted for a couple of years, the beaver lodge has a lived-in look. I see a big supply of willow groceries anchored nearby. The dam has been repaired. There are drag trails leading out in all directions. Good to see the beaver back on the upper end.

  Back at the cabin by late afternoon. Seven spruce grouse picking in the gravel of my path. If they would eat rolled oats, I would have a nice flock of wild chickens. Are they becoming friendlier now that it is almost time to leave?

  After supper I busied myself oiling tools and getting them ready to store.

  The surf was restless on the gravel of the beach.

  September 23rd. Twenty-five degrees and fog patches.

  This morning I watched a bull moose and a cow across the lake. The cow was above him. The bull climbed, and the cow acted afraid and tried to get by him down the mountain. Back and forth across the slope they trotted. The old boy worked like a cutting horse to block her every turn. Finally she broke through and headed down country. He had to be content to follow below. I lost them in the brush. Later on I heard a bawling repeated several times, and spotted a bull moose at the edge of the timber. Then a cow, another bull, and a second cow. Moose all over the place. The rutting season is at hand.

  I cleaned up the sheep hunters’ camps at the lower end of the lake and the connecting stream. They, too, had moved in for a spell and left their stains on the land.

  The red salmon run is over. I see no more finners along the shore. I saw some dead ones floating today and a good many other carcasses along the beaches. The sanitation department will have to get busy.

  The caribou hindquarter, which had been hanging under the cache for over five weeks, was hard and dry on the outside but moist and red inside. I cut some for the birds, and sliced off a steak for supper.

  September 24th. Clear, calm, and forty-five degrees. September never saw a finer morning.

  Today I will store many things away, close up the remaining window and put the pole props under the purlin logs. I wish I was opening up instead of closing.

  Amazing what a man accumulates! I rearranged my cache and now it is filled to bulging. I hope Babe is right, that few are brave enough to climb that high. I will store the big ladder in the timber and put the cache ladder in Spike’s cabin.

  I saw the sunlight sparkle on the wet paddle blade for the last time as I rode the canoe down to its storage place in Spike’s cabin. All these preparations point toward winter, but the fine weather doesn’t believe it.

  I would leave a few last-minute things.

  Tomorrow I would be ready, just in case.

  September 25th. Clear, calm, and thirty-two degrees.

  Just finished the breakfast dishes when I heard the plane. Babe drifted into the beach with a grin on his face.

  “It’s the twenty-fifth,” he said. “I’ve been watching the weather. It won’t last. Figured I’d better come and get you while it was fair.”

  There was no hurry, but Babe packed things to the plane while I put the covers over the windows, secured the stovepipe, and carried in a fresh supply of wood. The birds got many odds and ends from the kitchen and worked in desperation to pack it away in the timber.

  Babe watched them. “They’re going to miss welfare,” he said.

  Dick’s pantry displaying his crafted accessories. Everything shipshape.

  Ready for company with double bunks mattressed with foam rubber pads. A handy cabinet. Beach gravel floor.

  The stove corner emanates order—everything has its place.

  Big window with a desk before it. A large storage shelf. Dick’s sister had sent the curtains. Dick provided the rustic curtain rod and the driftwood sculpture.

  Time to go. The birds were perched silently in the spruces. A last check on the woodshed. The weasel whisked into the woodpile, switched ends, and peered out at me. I could hear the squirrel singing from a cluster of spruce cones. At last he was getting rid of me.

  I closed my door and turned the locking lever for the last time.

  Full throttle down the calm lake and up on the step. One last look at the beautiful country I knew so well. The brave gleam of my cabin logs and cache. There was a lot of me down there. Sixteen
months, but such days are a bonus that don’t count in your life span at all.

  That night during a gathering at Babe’s place, I felt a civilized cold germ taking hold.

  Babe came on schedule. It was time to leave for the winter. Everything stored. One last look until spring.

  Epilogue

  On Dick’s cabin table was left a message:

  This cabin has been my home for the past sixteen months, and it is with regret that I leave it for a time. I think it would be safe to say that I have hiked thousands of miles in my total of two years at Twin Lakes. In the past sixteen months alone I have exposed more than 3,000 feet of 8mm movie film and many rolls of 35mm film on the wildlife and the scenery of the area, plus the building of my cabin, woodshed, and cache.

  In my travels I have picked up and disposed of much litter left by others. Many fail to show respect that the area deserves.

  You didn’t find a padlock on my door (maybe I should have put one on) for I feel that a cabin in the wilderness should be open to those who need shelter. My charge for the use of it is reasonable, I think, although some no doubt will be unable to afford what I ask, and that is—take care of it as if you had carved it out with hand tools as I did. If when you leave your conscience is clear, then you have paid the full amount.

  This is beautiful country. It is even more beautiful when the animals are left alive.

  Thank you for your cooperation.

  R.L. Proenneke

  Afterword

  Dick Proenneke celebrated the 30th anniversary of his cabin-building at Twin Lakes on May 30, 1998. Since the original publication of One Man’s Wilderness in the spring of 1973, he has been on the scene, except for several trips to the Lower 48. Currently in his eighties, he chooses not to stay the winters; chores once routine require more effort these days.

  What has he been doing all this time? He has served as the ultimate guardian of the Twins. He has tried to make pristine again what others have soiled. Removing campsite blemishes and cleansing the littered beaches from his Eden have long been an obsession. During these rounds, his cameras have always been ready to shoot dramatic encounters—the nest of a fiercely aggressive goshawk, a wild-eyed, huge-racked caribou bull swimming to out-distance his paddle thrusts, the rescue of a bawling moose calf from a marauding bear. He has located bear dens and even crawled into them after they were vacant to find a surprisingly sweet odor instead of a stench. He has discovered wolf dens, usually near the water. He has explored glaciers and the surrounding crags, wearing out much footgear in countless miles over challenging terrain. He continues to thrill to the haunting choruses of wolves, especially beneath flickering veils of the northern lights.

  An event he will never forget happened in the spring of 1976 when he flew a Piper J3 Cub up from Iowa. He and his brother Raymond had serviced this plane and brought it to perfection. All that summer he kept it moored between occasional flights in the bight opposite his cabin. Enroute home in the fall, it almost killed him. He had been following the Alaskan Highway. At Sheep Mountain Pass his carburetor iced up. The motor quit. A forced landing was imminent. With a deadening jolt, he plowed into an up-slope. When he regained consciousness, he could barely move. No one would find him where he was. Somehow he painfully bellied his way up to the highway edge. A couple in a passing pickup truck stopped to help him. They drove him to Gulkana, where he received emergency treatment. From there, he was transferred to Anchorage and hospitalized for serious back trauma. It proved to be a lengthy, frustrating experience, but he returned in the spring to his cabin.

  That ordeal over, he focused on his cameras. Over the years he has exposed many rolls of 35mm film, as well as reels of 8mm and 16mm. The National Park Service produced One Man’s Alaska, featuring his striking photography. A videotape followed, The Frozen North, from Bob Swerer Productions at Fort Collins, Colorado. [While neither film is currently available, Swerer’s recent documentary on Dick’s adventure, Alone in The Wilderness, is available on VHS and DVD.]

  During Dick’s long tenure, Twin Lakes became part of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Today, a ranger station is situated near the foot of the lower lake. Dick has had contact with it by “walkie-talkie.” Travelers, many from other countries, have flown in for float trips down the Chilikadrotna River, which begins there. The cabin’s guest register lists hundreds of visitors, including former governor of Alaska Jay Hammond and the late singer John Denver, who have come over the years to meet and talk with Dick.

  This year, Dick formally entrusted his homestead to the Park Service. His cabin will be maintained as a historic site. He may return to stay in it anytime he wishes. And while he may not make the trip physically again, his spirit will always linger in the perfect notches of his logs.

  Sam Keith

  Anderson, South Carolina

  September 28, 1998

  A contemplative mood reflected in nature.

  About the Book

  Bob Henning, the founder and publisher of Alaska’s premiere magazine and book publishing company agreed to publish One Man’s Wilderness at the urging of his editors, Ed Fortier and Jim Rearden. In 1973, Alaska Northwest Publishing Company published the book that was to bring considerable public attention to Twin Lakes and Dick Proenneke’s wilderness lifestyle.

  That first edition was an album-style book by Sam Keith based on Dick Proenneke’s journals and illustrated with some of Dick’s original 35mm Kodachrome slides. It was bound as both a hardbound “Publisher’s Collector Edition” and as a regular trade softcover edition. The softbound edition was reprinted numerous times and sold over 54,000 copies before it went out of print.

  In 1992, Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company purchased the book assets of Alaska Northwest Books® from GTE Discovery Publications, who had bought them a few years earlier from Bob Henning. The publisher issued a new edition in 1999 that won the National Outdoor Book Award that year. The book sold over 300,000 copies, and is the basis for the DVD produced by Swerer Productions called Alone in the Wilderness, which is seen on PBS-TV as a documentary program that has been aired all over the nation since 2003.

  This 50th anniversary edition of One Man’s Wilderness is published with a new foreword by Nick Offerman plus color photographs not seen in print for twenty years. One Man’s Wilderness is also available in Japanese and Korean, and as an audiobook. The themes of self-sufficiency, thrift, and a kindred love of wilderness and wildlife give this book an enduring audience.

  For More on Dick Proenneke

  Dick Proenneke recorded his time in Alaska through journal entries and photographs, collected in this book, as well as through film, which can be seen in the documentary Alone in the Wilderness. Visit http://www.dickproenneke.com/ for more information on Dick and the documentary.

  The cabin at Upper Twin Lake was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 and still stands today. It is open to the public during the summer and showcases Dick’s master craftsmanship as well as his strong wilderness ethic. Learn more about Dick Proenneke, his cabin, and how to visit it at https://www.nps.gov/lacl/learn/historyculture/richard-l-proenneke.htm.

  The Friends of Dick Proenneke and Lake Clark National Park is an officially sanctioned charitable nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of Dick’s legacy and the wilderness characteristics of Lake Clark National Park. Find more at https://www.friendsofdickproenneke.org/.

  Looking down from Cowgill’s bench on the complex. The spruces screen the lake. Beyond loom the snow-crowned peaks.

  Also Available

  “The synchronicity of Sam Keith and Dick Proenneke’s friendship … left us with the gift of One Man’s Wilderness. Now, once again Sam’s words dance across the pages, bringing the reader on their own journey into the wilderness.”

  —Bob Swerer, producer of Alone in the Wilderness

  Fans of One Man’s Wilderness will be fascinated by this memoir of how its author, Sam Keith, and its subject, Dick Proenneke, first met.

  In 19
55, Keith went back to the Lower 48. He returned to Alaska in 1970 to visit Proenneke at his cabin at Twin Lakes. Keith wrote One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey (1973) based on his lifelong friend’s journals and photography. Book excerpts and some of Proenneke’s 16mm movies were used in the popular documentary Alone in the Wilderness, which continues to air on PBS. Both men passed away in 2003.

  Ten years later, Keith’s son-in-law, children’s book author/illustrator Brian Lies, discovered an unpublished manuscript by Keith in an archive box in the family’s garage. Forty years after it was written, this is the story of Keith’s own Alaska experiences, at turns harrowing and funny. Included are photos and excerpts from his journals, letters, and notebooks, woven in to create this compelling and poignant memoir of search and discovery.

  Journey with Sam Keith to experience an enthralling adventure in the wild beauty of North America’s last frontier.