[Newt]

Anyone had a chance to check this book out yet? Looks more of the same, but....well, you know, there may be something really good and different. Dang near 500 pages worth. I'd link to Amazon but you can do it yourself. I boycott em.

[Snowbrushy]

Is that the same guy from TV's PBS series?

[Slugman]

Yes. The first book, the one the TV show is based on, is about Dick Proeneke but written by somebody else. This book is the distillation of Dick's notes and journals. It covers a lot more detail, and a much longer time frame than the first book. I think I'm going to get me a copy. I have a gift card from a book store that I got from returning a copy of the first book that I got for my birthday last February (I already had one), so using it to buy the second book would be very appropriate.

[Phil]

One Man's Wilderness, what a great read. However, better title might be "One man's Carpentry". Maybe this is more a statement about my lack of practical skills but *dang* that guy could make stuff! Also, he seemed painfully ignorant about "things wild" and at times his efforts seemed to be aimed at civilizing his experiences, e.g., trying to adopt a baby elk, his efforts to landscape around his cabin. Whatever, it's a fantastic book.

[touron]

I would be interested in taking a look at the new book. I'm curious how the journal reads as written. I must be the only one who has read Alone in the Wilderness before seeing the PBS special. I started writing this short review last weekend and this thread seems like a good spot for it.: What makes this guy decide to live in the wilderness to start? Because of what is there? Because of what is not there? After finishing the book, you have some ideas of Richard Proenneke's character and why he enjoys this life. Sam Keith, a friend of Richard's, is the author, and the book is written from Richard's journals. A nice set of his color photographs are included as well. Preceding the diary style text is Robert Service's poem, I'm Scared of It All. ... I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains; My rivers that flash into foam; My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns; My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome. My forests packed full of mysterious gloom, My ice-fields agrind and aglare: The city is deadfalled with danger and doom -- I know that I'm safer up there. ... Richard is incredibly handy, building his log cabin from scratch on Lake Clark, using only about $40 of his own money, the price you or I might spend on a water filter or a day pack. He makes eating utensils and door and window hinges from wood. He makes cooking pans out of metal gas cans. Starting work on the cabin in late May, by early August he has a cozy abode to live in using wood, rock, gravel, and moss from around the lake. This is good, because as Fall arrives, the temperatures start dropping, and dropping, and dropping, to a minus 51 degrees "clear and cemetary-still" day on February 4th. The next evening it is 54 below zero. The thickness of the ice on the lake is 28 inches or more. He cuts a big round from a tree to place over his water hole so it doesn't continually freeze up overnight. It is not a completely solitary life, however. His friend Babe, a bush pilot, drops in in his 180 Cessna, sometimes dropping off food supplies such as sugar, flour, butter beans, bacon, dried apples, and the mail as well. Richard supplements this food with the garden he has planted outside the cabin--peas, carrots, beets, rutabagas, onions, and potatos. The book contrasts Richard's more relaxed lifestyle with Babe's buzz-in buzz-out life. He has to deal with creosote in his stove, a bear trying to climb up on his moss roof. He tries to rescue an abandoned baby caribou. He picks up wasted meat that hunters leave behind. He tracks a wolverine. He travels by foot and canoe: "Distance is relative. You learn that in time. A trip for me down to the lower end of the lower lake takes three hours by canoe if I don't have the wind to fight. That's a distance of about eight and a half miles. With a motor on the canoe I could make the trip in under an hour, but a motor's noise stills teh sounds of the wilderness. Eight and a half miles can be covered in minutes with a car on an expressway, but what does a man see?" What does a man see? Who knows? Maybe it just depends on what one pays attention to, but there is no doubt that a solitary life in the wilderness forces one to encounter life in a different way, and at least a limited experience of this would be valuable to most people. So is it better to live the live the life of a hermit, or that of the city dweller? It is for each person to answer themselves. An unexamined life is not worth living. -Socrates