Riding the Hasselhoff: A Review of ONE MAN’S WILDERNESS
I have many fond memories of childhood:
There was the time my siblings and I caught lightning bugs in our backyard. Too small to seize any for myself, my father snagged one for me, placing it within my cupped hands. Turning his back momentarily, he faced me again, seconds later, asking what had happened to my prize; I smiled at him, my teeth aglow with bioluminescence.
Or, how about the time I attended a police conference with my family in Pittsburgh, PA, and met James Brady, Ronald Reagan’s Press Secretary, who sadly had been shot in the head during John Hinckley, Jr.’s failed assassination attempt of the then-president? He attended the gathering to bring attention to his Brady Bill, legislation for stricter handgun and assault weapon restrictions. Fresh out of kindergarten, and ever-informative to others of facts I couldn’t grasp were obvious to all, I notified the kind gentleman, leaning forward in his wheelchair to shake the miniature hand extended toward him: “Excuse me, sir, there’s a hole in your head.” My dad, aghast, apologized profusely. Mr. Brady smiled and chuckled for a moment, likely momentarily removed from the seriousness of his situation by the innocence (read as: ignorance) of brazen dutifulness he’d witnessed, saying, “Thank you, son. I know.” When we arrived back at our hotel room that evening, my dad turned on the television. To our surprise, our family was on CNN, specific focus placed on a snippet of Mr. Brady leaning over to shake my hand. Luckily, either the microphones in the room hadn’t captured audio of the moment, or 1980s editors proved more judicious than those of our modern era.
Probably some of my best collective memories, however, were those in which I was building things in our family’s basement playroom. Scattered with toys, it was likely a smaller square footage than my mind now recalls in hindsight, filled with prospects of imagination and creative possibility (and lots and lots of wood paneling). There, I constructed towering edifices with LEGO, military barracks for my plastic army men with Lincoln Logs (which my brother and I subsequently shot down with flung rubber bands), and forts composed of pillows and bedsheets and tray tables and every other material whose purchase we glowed in the prospect of addition, forgetting, of course, the structures were only temporary and all complexity inherent in their erection would prove equally taxing in their dismantlement.
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Children are natural builders. Even nowadays, before screens are slid before their eyes, disrupting their inbuilt desire for physical stimuli, be they with blocks or boxes or interlocking plastic bits, children love to create things—things that are high or long or shaped in ways only developing minds are capable of envisioning. Most importantly, they want to build things they can climb inside. Forts, igloos, houses—anything they believe provides safety, comfort, and exclusivity from adults, bothersome siblings, or the opposite sex is paramount.
Luckily, not everyone loses this penchant for laborious architecture, trading temporary materials for permanent, obtaining their ingredients from primary sources versus the television couch in the den. Some spend their teen and adult years acquiring skills of carpentry, hunting, and wilderness survival toward personal goals, proving greater than acts of rugged individualism. Dick Proenneke was one such person.
In One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, one man, i.e. Proenneke, travels to Alaska in the pursuit of constructing a log cabin in the wilderness, using it for shelter during the impending winter, and living off the land. Apart from select tools and a precisely-chosen collection of food and essentials, Proenneke is dropped off by a lake, where he axes and hews logs (not “Lincoln”) for his cabin, building his domicile over many months.
Besides the occasional care packages delivered by plane, Proenneke is entirely self-sufficient. He grows his own vegetables, and hunts and fishes only what he needs. (In some cases, he watches predators from afar—bears, wolves, and the like—fell prey, and scavenges what’s left over.) Using a canoe he builds himself, he searches land along the banks of a nearby lake for sustenance, resources for his project, and breathtaking vistas, always keeping an eye toward plummeting temperatures, hellacious weather, and wild animals. (One winter episode with a baby caribou is particularly sweet and heartbreaking.)
A composition of journal entries and photographs Proenneke collected during his exploits, One Man’s Wilderness can be austere at times. Proenneke had plenty of time for reflection in his Alaskan solitude, and he chose to select his words sparingly. While words like “austere” may lead a prospective reader to assume a book is boring, such suppositions couldn’t be more wrong. The simplicity and directness of the language flows like unvarnished poetry. Passages detailing weights and measurements of supplies roll off the page with an ease and exactitude, reflecting the scant, rough terrain their author experienced firsthand in producing them. There is nothing mind-numbing in this prose.
At 50 years-old and growing, this book’s publication will likely never see an end, especially as the wilderness Proenneke voluntarily tackled becomes as scarce today as the determination and grit and environmental respect necessary for someone to ford it. (As a special bonus, the 50th Anniversary Edition includes a foreword by Nick Offerman, which is as valuable in its brevity as the text it precedes is in its entirety.)
