Written by SAM KEITH
from the Journals & Photographs of
DICK PROENNEKE
Foreword by NICK OFFERMAN
Text © 1973, 1999 by Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke
Photographs © 1973, 1999 by Richard Proenneke
Book compilation © 2018 by Alaska Northwest Books®
Map: Gray Mouse Graphics
Illustrator: Roz Pape
First Printing of the 50th Anniversary Edition 2018
This edition:
ISBN 9781513261645 (softbound)
ISBN 9781513261805 (hardbound)
ISBN 9781513261812 (e-book)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier edition as follows:
Proenneke, Richard
One man’s wilderness : an Alaskan odyssey / by Sam Keith ; from the journals and photograph collection of Richard Proenneke. - 26th anniversary ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: Anchorage : Alaska Northwest Pub. Co. [1973]
ISBN 978-0-88240-513-1 (softbound)
ISBN 978-0-88240-942-9 (hardbound)
ISBN 978-0-88240-840-8 (e-book)
1. Proenneke, Richard—Diaries. 2. Pioneers—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region (north of Lake Clark)—Diaries. 3. Twin Lakes Region (Alaska)—Description and travel. 4. Twin Lakes Region (Alaska)—Pictorial works. 5. Frontier and pioneer life—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region
6. Wilderness survival—Alaska—Twin Lakes Region I. Keith, Sam. II. Title.
F912.T85P76 1999
917.98’4-dc21 98-27704
CIP
Alaska Northwest Books®
An imprint of
Proudly distributed by Ingram Publisher Services.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
Foreword
BY NICK OFFERMAN
When you woke up today, did you turn on a light? Did any of your breakfast come out of a refrigerator? Was it prepared over a gas or electric range, or an open fire? Let’s say you had bacon, eggs and toast with butter, with a glass of orange juice. Did you raise or grow any of these food items yourself, or did they come to you through the vast network of food providers in America? Did you enjoy that breakfast in some sort of shelter, like an apartment or a house? Were you comfortably seated for eating, maybe utilizing a chair and a table or a counter? The answers to these questions likely bespeak the incredible amount of convenience that most of us have come to enjoy in developed nations, often as a matter of course. We tend to take these luxuries for granted without giving them a great deal of thought, because that’s what civilization does, among other things. It takes scientific advances that would have blown the minds of our ancestors only a hundred years ago and turns them into mass-produced products and services so commonplace that they are simply unremarkable.
One arguable advantage of this societal conditioning is that we are afforded more time for distractions. Because we can enjoy a glass of milk without needing to milk the cow, and we are generally not required to tend to our crops, livestock, or firewood, we can then turn our collective gaze toward more leisurely targets. This is time that
