A middle-aged man wearing a plaid shirt, denim overalls, and a white driving cap is building a cabin before a backdrop of snowy mountains and a turquoise lake. The blade of his handsaw makes a steady sound, cutting through a peeled log stroke by stroke. As the title of his film reveals, Dick Proenneke is Alone in the Wilderness, although from my spot behind the counter, I see how Dick draws a crowd: every seat in the video nook is occupied, and men—mostly older visitors who seem past their cabin-building years—stand behind the benches, arms crossed. All day, every day, tourists consume Dick’s story, which continually unfolds since we keep him on auto-repeat.
It’s summer, and I’m working as a park ranger at a visitors’ center in Fairbanks. I dole out brochures for lands across Alaska, including Lake Clark National Park, where Dick’s cabin on the edge of Upper Twin Lake is now a historic site. Dick is a star, with a strong presence on the park’s website and his own handout that I’m constantly photocopying since it flies off the rack in the video nook. We’ve run out of DVDs, so a gray-haired Australian buys Dick’s book. “He’s magic,” the man sighs, and I have to agree.
One of my coworkers says Alone in the Wilderness is the only movie she’s seen over and over and not come to hate. It captivates me, from its opening shot of rosy alpenglow and Dick’s calm declaration: “It was good to be back in the wilderness again. I was alone, just me and the animals.” As the film begins in the summer of 1968, Dick is fifty-one and preparing to build the cabin where he will live for more than thirty years. Other than supply runs by the pilot Babe Alsworth, Dick will be entirely alone, just himself and his tripod-mounted camera.
I confess to my co-workers what seems an obvious desire: I’d love to be Dick Proenneke. Who wouldn’t want to live alone in the wilderness? They don’t, as it turns out. “He seems so lonely!” Anne bemoans. “Too many chores,” Adia adds.
She’s right—he does do a lot of chores. “July the thirty-first,” Dick announces. “Tin-bending day.” He’s cutting down metal gasoline containers and transforming them into common household items. “Made a water bucket, a wash pan, a dish pan, a flour pan, and storage cans,” Dick rattles off, so that I am astonished, once again, by his productivity. In the video nook, the crowd appears captivated. It would be hard to script a duller TV moment, but Dick makes even tin bending compelling because what he is really doing is sidestepping the modern world, tin shears in hand. Then he realizes he needs a spoon to pour batter onto the griddle. An hour later, he’s carved a spoon.
The writer Sam Keith, who befriended Dick when they both worked at an Alaskan naval base, edited Dick’s journals and in 1973 published One Man’s Wilderness, a chronicle of the construction of Dick’s cabin, which became an Alaskan classic. Five years before my job in the visitors’ center, this book introduced me to Dick Proenneke when I picked a copy off a sale rack in Fairbanks and brought it to my government job counting fish on the Alaska Peninsula. I did not know it then, but that job would be the closest I would come to living Dick’s dream life. I shared a cabin with a coworker in a river valley surrounded by snowy mountains and next to a lake. A pilot flew in supplies, and two months later he flew us out. In between, we counted fish, roamed, completed chores, and read. On days when the clouds lifted, I admired a hanging glacier. One day, while the wind blew forty, I curled up in my sleeping bag and began Dick’s book. The salmon were running, and from my window I watched bears fishing. Reading the book in such a remote place fired my imagination, even though building a cabin seemed out of my reach. Dick first visited Twin Lakes in 1962 and vowed to return. Five years later he did, cutting logs for his cabin, which he built the following summer. I lived and worked at the fish camp for three summers, in a cabin I did not build, and never alone. I have never been back. Dick served in the US Navy in World War II, worked as a carpenter, and retired as a diesel mechanic and heavy-equipment operator from the Kodiak Naval Base. Meanwhile, I’ve counted fish and doled out brochures.
I have another ten years to go until I’m as old as Dick was when he built his cabin, but I cannot imagine that will be enough time for me to gain his level of competence. I’ve settled on a compromise, visiting the wilderness but not living there. Instead I live down a dirt road in Fairbanks. My property is part of an old homestead, and I’ve been fixing it up for ten years. Through years of renovations, I lived with ripped-out walls and lumber piles in my entry. Construction starts and stalls, and I’ve entered a hazy phase of perpetual chores. I’ve put in a garden and grow vegetables. I pick berries with an obsession that would perhaps be better applied toward carpentry. I am not alone in the wilderness, but I am alone most of the time.
As part of my job, I lead an interpretive walk about pioneers of early Fairbanks. I carry an iPad to show visitors photos from the early days, when pioneers carved up the forest and created a town. I point at the busy road bordering our parking lot and pull up a photo from 100 years ago, when there was nothing but a string of cabins and gardens. We visit a surviving cabin, a token souvenir from what was demolished to build the visitors’ center. There is a fake outhouse in the yard, and tourists practice driving Segways in the parking lot before their tour along the bike path.
The frontier has largely vanished from Fairbanks, and I find myself desperate to convey how self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, and other frontier values live on in small ways. The tourists want to hear this, too—they are more drawn to Dick’s film, which shows the Alaska they want to see, than they are to the bingo parlors and box stores found on streets near the visitors’ center. When I tell the story of the past, I bring in my own story. I don’t have plumbing. I haul water or melt snow on a wood stove. I split wood. I play dodge-the-moose in my driveway. When I return to the topic of the historical cabin, one lady insists my life is more interesting. “You are a pioneer!” a man claims. No, I am a cabin yuppie, with Internet but no plumbing.
It’s summer, and I’m working as a park ranger at a visitors’ center in Fairbanks. I dole out brochures for lands across Alaska, including Lake Clark National Park, where Dick’s cabin on the edge of Upper Twin Lake is now a historic site. Dick is a star, with a strong presence on the park’s website and his own handout that I’m constantly photocopying since it flies off the rack in the video nook. We’ve run out of DVDs, so a gray-haired Australian buys Dick’s book. “He’s magic,” the man sighs, and I have to agree.
One of my coworkers says Alone in the Wilderness is the only movie she’s seen over and over and not come to hate. It captivates me, from its opening shot of rosy alpenglow and Dick’s calm declaration: “It was good to be back in the wilderness again. I was alone, just me and the animals.” As the film begins in the summer of 1968, Dick is fifty-one and preparing to build the cabin where he will live for more than thirty years. Other than supply runs by the pilot Babe Alsworth, Dick will be entirely alone, just himself and his tripod-mounted camera.I confess to my co-workers what seems an obvious desire: I’d love to be Dick Proenneke. Who wouldn’t want to live alone in the wilderness? They don’t, as it turns out. “He seems so lonely!” Anne bemoans. “Too many chores,” Adia adds.
She’s right—he does do a lot of chores. “July the thirty-first,” Dick announces. “Tin-bending day.” He’s cutting down metal gasoline containers and transforming them into common household items. “Made a water bucket, a wash pan, a dish pan, a flour pan, and storage cans,” Dick rattles off, so that I am astonished, once again, by his productivity. In the video nook, the crowd appears captivated. It would be hard to script a duller TV moment, but Dick makes even tin bending compelling because what he is really doing is sidestepping the modern world, tin shears in hand. Then he realizes he needs a spoon to pour batter onto the griddle. An hour later, he’s carved a spoon.
The writer Sam Keith, who befriended Dick when they both worked at an Alaskan naval base, edited Dick’s journals and in 1973 published One Man’s Wilderness, a chronicle of the construction of Dick’s cabin, which became an Alaskan classic. Five years before my job in the visitors’ center, this book introduced me to Dick Proenneke when I picked a copy off a sale rack in Fairbanks and brought it to my government job counting fish on the Alaska Peninsula. I did not know it then, but that job would be the closest I would come to living Dick’s dream life. I shared a cabin with a coworker in a river valley surrounded by snowy mountains and next to a lake. A pilot flew in supplies, and two months later he flew us out. In between, we counted fish, roamed, completed chores, and read. On days when the clouds lifted, I admired a hanging glacier. One day, while the wind blew forty, I curled up in my sleeping bag and began Dick’s book. The salmon were running, and from my window I watched bears fishing. Reading the book in such a remote place fired my imagination, even though building a cabin seemed out of my reach. Dick first visited Twin Lakes in 1962 and vowed to return. Five years later he did, cutting logs for his cabin, which he built the following summer. I lived and worked at the fish camp for three summers, in a cabin I did not build, and never alone. I have never been back. Dick served in the US Navy in World War II, worked as a carpenter, and retired as a diesel mechanic and heavy-equipment operator from the Kodiak Naval Base. Meanwhile, I’ve counted fish and doled out brochures.
I have another ten years to go until I’m as old as Dick was when he built his cabin, but I cannot imagine that will be enough time for me to gain his level of competence. I’ve settled on a compromise, visiting the wilderness but not living there. Instead I live down a dirt road in Fairbanks. My property is part of an old homestead, and I’ve been fixing it up for ten years. Through years of renovations, I lived with ripped-out walls and lumber piles in my entry. Construction starts and stalls, and I’ve entered a hazy phase of perpetual chores. I’ve put in a garden and grow vegetables. I pick berries with an obsession that would perhaps be better applied toward carpentry. I am not alone in the wilderness, but I am alone most of the time.
As part of my job, I lead an interpretive walk about pioneers of early Fairbanks. I carry an iPad to show visitors photos from the early days, when pioneers carved up the forest and created a town. I point at the busy road bordering our parking lot and pull up a photo from 100 years ago, when there was nothing but a string of cabins and gardens. We visit a surviving cabin, a token souvenir from what was demolished to build the visitors’ center. There is a fake outhouse in the yard, and tourists practice driving Segways in the parking lot before their tour along the bike path.
The frontier has largely vanished from Fairbanks, and I find myself desperate to convey how self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, and other frontier values live on in small ways. The tourists want to hear this, too—they are more drawn to Dick’s film, which shows the Alaska they want to see, than they are to the bingo parlors and box stores found on streets near the visitors’ center. When I tell the story of the past, I bring in my own story. I don’t have plumbing. I haul water or melt snow on a wood stove. I split wood. I play dodge-the-moose in my driveway. When I return to the topic of the historical cabin, one lady insists my life is more interesting. “You are a pioneer!” a man claims. No, I am a cabin yuppie, with Internet but no plumbing.
by Amy Marsh, Guernica | Read more:
Image: Richard Proenneke
[ed. I've fished the stream connecting Upper and Lower Twin Lakes and saw Dick's cabin (I think it was his, how many could there be?). Quite a memorable trip (almost died). The country is stunningly beautiful; the lake trout and grayling large and plentiful. See also: Reflections on a Man in his Wilderness (NPCA). Alaska is/was a special place because of places and people like this.]
