Richard Proenneke - One Mans Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

AN ALASKAN ODYSSEY

By Sam Keith from the Journals
and Photographs of Richard Proenneke

Text by Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke
Photographs by Richard Proenneke
Book compilation 1999 by Alaska Northwest Books
An imprint of Graphic Arts Books
P.O. Box 56118, Portland, OR 97238-6118

Thirty-second Alaska Northwest Books printing 2011

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.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Proenneke, Richard

One mans 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

1. Proenneke, RichardDiaries. 2. PioneersAlaskaTwin 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 lifeAlaskaTwin Lakes Region 6. Wilderness survivalAlaskaTwin Lakes Region I. Keith, Sam. II. Title.

F912.T85P76 1999

917.984-dc21

98-27704

CIP

Designer: Elizabeth Watson
Map: Gray Mouse Graphics
Illustrator: Roz Pape
Photographer: Richard Proenneke
Cover Photos: Richard Proenneke
Printed in the United States of America

Preface

Although Dick Proenneke came originally from Primrose, Iowa, he will always be to me as truly Alaskan as willow brush and pointed spruce and jagged peaks against the sky. He embodies the spirit of the Great Land.

I met Dick in 1952 when I worked as a civilian on the Kodiak Naval Base. Together we explored the many wild bays of Kodiak and Afognak Islands where the giant brown bear left his tracks in the black sand, climbed mountains to the clear lakes hidden beyond their green shoulders, gorged ourselves on fat butter clams steamed over campfires that flickered before shelters of driftwood and saplings of spruce.

It was during these times that I observed and admired his wonderful gift of patience, his exceptional ability to improvise, his unbelievable stamina, and his consuming curiosity of all that was around him. Here was a remarkable blending of mechanical aptitude and genuine love of the natural scene, and even though I often saw him crawling over the complex machinery of the twentieth century, his coveralls smeared with grease, I always envisioned him in buckskins striding through the high mountain passes in the days of Lewis and Clark.

If a tough job had to be done, Dick was the man to do it. A tireless worker, his talents as a diesel mechanic were not only in demand on the base but eagerly sought by the contractors in town. His knowledge, his imagination, and his tenacity were more than stubborn machinery could resist.

His quiet efficiency fascinated me. I wondered about the days before he came to Alaska.

While performing his duties as a carpenter in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was stricken with rheumatic fever. For six months he was bedridden. It kept him from shipping out into the fierce action that awaited in the Pacific, but more than anything else, it made him despise this weakness of his body that had temporarily disabled him. Once recovered, he set about proving to himself again and again that this repaired machine was going to outperform all others. He drove himself beyond common endurance. This former failing of his body became an obsession, and he mercilessly put it to the test at every opportunity.

After the war he went to diesel school. He could have remained there as an instructor, but yearnings from the other side of his nature had to be answered. He worked on a ranch as a sheep camp tender in the high lonesome places of Oregon. As the result of a friends urging and the prospect of starting a cattle ranch on Shuyak Island, he came to Alaska in 1950.

This dream soon vanished when the island proved unsuitable for the venture. A visit to a cattle spread on Kodiak further convinced the would-be partners that, for the time being at least, the Alaska ranch idea was out. They decided to go their separate ways.

For several years Dick worked as a heavy equipment operator and repairman on the naval base at Kodiak. He worked long, hard hours in all kinds of weather for construction contractors. He fished commercially for salmon. He worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service at King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula. And though his living for the most part came from twisting bolts and welding steel, his heart was always in those faraway peaks that lost themselves in the clouds.

A turning point in Dicks life came when a retired Navy captain who had a cabin in a remote wilderness area invited Dick to spend a few weeks with him and his wife. They had to fly in over the Alaska Range. This was Dicks introduction to the Twin Lakes country, and he knew the day he left it that one day he would return.

The return came sooner than he expected. He was working for a contractor who was being pressured by union officials to hire only union men. Dick always felt he was his own man. His philosophy was simple: Do the job you must do and dont worry about the hours or the conditions.