"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." - Dick Proenneke
Richard (Dick) Proenneke and the cabin he built himself near the shore of Upper Twin Lake at Lake Clark National Park and Preserve / NPS file
How many of you have looked past your spreadsheets and presentations and reports, stared out the window (or into space), and wished you were gazing upon rugged, remote, snowcapped mountains instead of looking at your computer screen? How many of you picture yourselves silently paddling cold, turquoise-hued lake water, your kayak or canoe slicing through that lake’s glassy, smoothness at sunrise? How many of you would like to escape the workaday world and live a simple life off the grid for even just a little while, maybe spending time in a log cabin surrounded by remote forest and mountains? Richard (Dick) Proenneke did just that. For nearly 30 years, this self-educated naturalist, conservationist, writer, and filmmaker lived far from civilization in a log cabin he built himself near the shore of Upper Twin Lake in the Twin Lakes region of what is now a part of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
Sometimes, it takes a transformative event to change a person’s direction in life. In 1962, an eye injury almost left him blind. That was when Dick Proenneke decided to find a place within the beauty of the Alaskan landscape, far from any city or town. In 1967, at the age of 51, he began searching for the perfect spot, settling on a location not too far from the Upper Twin Lake cabin of friends with whom he often vacationed. In 1968, Dick began construction of his 12 x 16 ft (3.65 x 4.87 m) log cabin using peeled, round spruce logs hewn by hand-held tools he fashioned himself. Proenneke also built a combined woodshed/outhouse, and a log cache (storage shed) that sat on 9-ft (2.74 m) poles, accessed by a ladder he constructed. He even built his own furniture for the cabin.
In keeping with his wilderness values and living off the grid, without any of the modern conveniences we may take for granted (electricity, running water), Dick honed his observational skills, filming and photographing the natural world around him while recording his daily life and experiences in journals.
From sport hunter to subsistence hunter to non-hunter, Proenneke developed into a conservationist more interested in observing wildlife than in hunting it down. During his hunting days, he never wasted any part of whatever he caught. After Proenneke ceased hunting, he still salvaged any game meat he found that had been left behind by hunters who had not harvested all the edible meat. He took a strong stance on what he considered wasteful, wanton hunting by sport hunters, guides, and even acquaintances with whom he had once enjoyed cordial relations.
Although fiercely independent and content to live by himself, Dick Proenneke was no hermit. He corresponded with others, occasionally visited family in the Lower 48, and enjoyed the company of friends who brought him groceries and his mail.
In 1999, at the age of 83, Proenneke left his Alaskan cabin to live with a brother in California. In 2000, he visited his cabin one last time and a 15-minute video was filmed of his visit. Dick died of a stroke in 2003. He willed his cabin to the National Park Service.
You can read Dick Proenneke’s journal entries in the book One Man’s Wilderness, An Alaskan Odyssey, by author Sam Keith, take a virtual tour of his cabin and Upper Twin Lake, watch a 27-minute National Archives documentary, and even visit his cabin, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
