By Sam Keith from the journals and photographs of Dick Proenneke
Pages: 269
Book Read This Year: #5
When I was slogging through the end of The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire I said to myself that I would have to give myself a break from exploring/cold extremes books. I was getting fatigued with the topic.
...... And then my mom sent me this book containing Dick Proenneke's story of his Alaskan adventure. You hear that? Alaskan. Alaska is kinda known for her cold extremes. Here I go again.......
You wouldn't know the nostalgic draw this book had on me unless you grew up in my family. My dad loved the PBS Special about Dick Proenneke. My mom made a donation to one of PBS fund drive at a time when they were giving away DVDs of the Dick Proenneke Special as a thank you gift. She did that for my dad. She hated the idea of shunning society and living the life of a hermit in the wilderness. My dad relished the thought. He could never personally go on such an Odyssey. Even if he had possessed all the skills, he had my mom who would never go, and a large number of children to provide for. So, he lived vicariously through Dick Proenneke while watching his DVD.
Okay, enough about my parents. You want to know how the book was to read.
It was relaxing. The way Proenneke describes the wildlife, the beautiful scenery, and his satisfying labor is idyllic. His use of word pictures is very creative. Reading his journal entries really made me want to up my journaling game. The way he describes what he is feeling is well thought out, too. I imagine living solo in the wilderness would help you get very closely acquainted with your feelings.
Dick Proenneke hailed from Iowa, worked as a carpenter in the U.S. Navy during WWII, and worked several jobs during his career including heavy equipment operator, ranch hand, and diesel mechanic. Shortly after he turned 50 he embarked on a unique adventure to live solo in the Alaskan wilderness and document his adventure. He brought a 8mm. film camcorder and a still picture camera. He would set up a the camcorder and record himself working. There was no audio. In the PBS Special the footage was overlayed with a voice reading his journals as he described what he was working on. He'd also video wildlife and write in his journal about what he had seen. So it comes off like narration. I think he was ahead of his time. He was doing vlogging long before anyone else. This was 1968.
He wasn't doing homesteading. He never tried living off the land. He was living in the wilderness to observe and, also, for self discovery, I think. He built his cabin by hand without help for the satisfaction it brought him to know that he could accomplish such a feat. He was a little bit of a scientist, too. He was always taking measurements and recording them; air temperature, water temperature, ice depth, populations of mountain goats, etc.......
One thing I loved about this book was the number of pictures. About a 1/3 of the pages are full color photographs that Proenneke captured. Not only are they beautiful but they meant I had less pages to read, for which I am grateful!
I have two passages that I want to share as examples of Dick Proenneke's way of describing things. I will close with these excerpts:
From page 131 regarding salmon:
"A little later I looked up from applying a coat of Varathane on my furniture to see a scarlet fish with a green head slice through a wave. It is the end of a long journey for them. They will spawn and die. Their escape from the can is a very brief reprieve."
From page 180 a little humor:
"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."
