Alone in the Wilderness, Again and Again
Dick Proenneke at his cabin in 1985.
Photograph by Richard Proenneke and donated by Raymond Proenneke, U.S. National Parks Service A middle-aged man wearing a plaid shirt, denim overalls, and a white driving cap is building a cabin before a backdrop of snowy mountains and a turquoise lake. The blade of his handsaw makes a steady sound, cutting through a peeled log stroke by stroke. As the title of his film reveals, Dick Proenneke is Alone in the Wilderness, although from my spot behind the counter, I see how Dick draws a crowd: every seat in the video nook is occupied, and men—mostly older visitors who seem past their cabin-building years—stand behind the benches, arms crossed. All day, every day, tourists consume Dick’s story, which continually unfolds since we keep him on auto-repeat.
It’s summer, and I’m working as a park ranger at a visitors’ center in Fairbanks. I dole out brochures for lands across Alaska, including Lake Clark National Park, where Dick’s cabin on the edge of Upper Twin Lake is now a historic site. Dick is a star, with a strong presence on the park’s website and his own handout that I’m constantly photocopying since it flies off the rack in the video nook. We’ve run out of DVDs, so a gray-haired Australian buys Dick’s book. “He’s magic,” the man sighs, and I have to agree.
One of my coworkers says is the only movie she’s seen over and over and not come to hate. It captivates me, from its opening shot of rosy alpenglow and Dick’s calm declaration: “It was good to be back in the wilderness again. I was alone, just me and the animals.” As the film begins in the summer of 1968, Dick is fifty-one and preparing to build the cabin where he will live for more than thirty years. Other than supply
