One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
4.7 | 1,678 ratings
Price: 12.78
Last update: 12-09-2025
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- NyiNyaA Chronicle of Doing One's Best...I think I know why Richard Proenneke was up there in the wilds alone. This gentle, unforgettable man was also a craftsman and a perfectionist. His quest for beauty in the mundane, for precision and geometric elegance would have driven me -- and lesser beings like me -- nuts. Reading about it made me able to fall in love with the man. Living it would have led to the authorities searching for the body. Having said that, however, I must also say that this incredibly readable book is a treasure. It should not be overlooked.
Author Sam Keith (who bases the book on Proenneke's journals) captured the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the bush. This is the story of a cabin. Richard Proenneke builds it by hand, to his own unbendable standards of practicality and aesthetics, and makes the reader love every minute of it. Interspersed within this chronicle are Proenneke's encounters with bears, weasels, birds, wolverines and other humans. Proenneke admires critters. It's only the two-legged varmints that offend him, offend nature, and most of the time, destroy it randomly. His encounters with animals are laugh out loud funny, touching, impressive; his encounters with humans -- or their aftermath -- do not say much for us as a species.
Recently the local PBS station ran two films about Proenneke, using his own footage. It was a thrill to see the cabin I'd so often imagined, to look closely for the wolf print on the fireplace, to share his encounters with bears, moose and various camp robbers. But best of all, for me, was to watch him painstakingly his food cache. This project is a pefect example of doing things right and doing them well. The cache was a miniature replica of the cabin, meticulously crafted on the ground, then disassembled, the pieces carried up to a high(out of the reach of bears) platform, and carefully reassembled there. How can you not lose your heart to a man who would trouble to do that...just for the sheer joy of doing it.
Proenneke was not a prig, by any means. Not an anal-retentive pencil straightener...just someone whose soul would not permit cheapjack, shoddy work. In one of the documentaries, we get a perfect example of the difference. While everything is the cabin is rough-hewn, it is aesthetically pleasing and perfectly designed. Utilitarian and, in its own way, beautiful. But when Proenneke's sister sends him a pair of kitchen curtains, our pragmatic loner finds a nice stick and uses that as his curtain rod. Perfection is never smug.
Proenneke is a hero, a man in full, an icon, and maybe the last of his kind. His book is unforgettable. I hope you experience it. - Alvin AndersonA Life Many Dream of, But Few Actually Do.A must read for those who dream of living off the grid in the great outdoors. The book is 224 pages long and contains over 50 photographs by Proenneke himself that he took during his year in the bush. It starts off with a Preface by Sam Keith, along with a poem by Robert W. Service that fits in well with what the book maintains. Proenneke is a great story-teller, and I even delight in hearing the little things that he speaks of. For example, there is one day's entry where he mentions how he was ice-fishing and caught a beautiful-looking trout in the lake. He took it home, was ready to fry it up, but as he looked at the creature struggling to swim in the small basin of water he kept it in before the fry, he finally decided that such a magnificent creature belonged at the bottom of the lake, not "browning" in a skillet.
- D. BatdorffExcellent ReadThis book is well written, and reflects the time period very well. If you liked the videos of Preoneke's Alaskan years, you will love the book. This guy literally loved the solitude (as buffered by his interactions with the small game around his cabin), and "tamed" the wilderness by his exceptional skills and planning. This is not a book about survival, as he only considers the one incident of running headlong into a grizzly as a severe threat of death. His foresight, work ethic, and skill set made an Alaskan winter somewhat comfortable.
This book takes you into the mind of a man who was in control of himself, and a man who mastered many skills through a lifetime of learning. His description of the land, animals, and the construction of his cabin are outstanding. He also shares some deeper understanding of people, as he describes his links to the outside world, and his admiration for Babe, the bush pilot. This is a guy who saw the good and the practical in all he took in. Great read! - JohnGood introductionAfter bumping into the documentary on PBS recently, and being fascinated, my wife got me this book for Christmas to learn more. She was fascinated as well. This is an easy to read, little book that is a good introduction to the Dick Proenneke story. I think it does what it intended, which was to tell you the story, gives you a flavor for the man who undertook this adventure and recount some of the things he saw and experienced. It only covers the building of the cabin and living the first full year in it. He came back year after year from what I understand for a 30 year period, but none of that is covered in this book. I guess there is some heavy editing that was done from his journals in creating this book, causing him to not consent to the use of them again unless there was no editing, so that is where the three other books: Journals of Richard Proenneke; come from. For what it is worth, the NPS doesn't have this book on their site about him, but it does have the others. The journal entries can get somewhat repetitive (what can you say on another 30 below Dec day) and the very detailed building instructions for everything can be head spinning at times, but it still is a quick, enjoyable read that gives you a sense of what it is like to live in such a raw, rugged land. I chose to order The Early Years The Journals of Richard Proenneke 1967-1973; to get the unedited story of this time frame and beyond but this book was a great appetizer. I recommend it for the curious and casual fan.
- Thomas F.Nice bookGreat story and nice color photos