Posts Tagged ‘woodstove’

Alone in the Wilderness Dick Proenneke

 

DESTINATION-  BACK AND BEYOND

 

 

I have often thought about what I would do out here if I were stricken with a serious illness, if I broke a leg, cut myself badly, or had an attack of appendicitis. Almost as quickly as the thought came, I dismissed it. Why worry about something that isn’t? . . . I have thought briefly about getting caught in rock slides or falling from a rock face. If that happened, I would probably perish on the mountain in much the same way many of the big animals do. I would be long gone before anyone found me. My only wish is that folks wouldn’t spend a lot of time searching. When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness?

If you have never come across the name Richard Proenneke (May 4, 1916-April 28, 2003), and there is a part of you that listens to the Wilderness calling, if you yearn for the way life should be, and enjoy the comfort of a hearth in a cabin on a snowy night, then you will probably be interested in his story.

Dick was born in Iowa, and spent time as a carpenter in the Navy during which he contracted rheumatic fever, and was bedridden for almost 6 months, vowing after to spend the rest of his life working on the strength and health of his body.   After being discharged, he went to school and became a very adept diesel mechanic – his skill were well known and sought after in Kodiak Alaska where he had eventually moved.  Dick’s heart was captured by the wildness of Alaska.  In the spring of 1967, a contractor that Dick was working for was under pressure to hire only union men – Dick always felt he was his own man, and he did the job he had to do without worrying about the hours or conditions.  It was the excuse he needed to plan his retirement at Twin Lakes, and at 51 Dick headed into the Wild and never looked back.

I was here to test myself,  not that I had never done it before, but this time it was going to be a more thorough and lasting examination.

It would be a tough argument  to win to find a person on earth that was more hardcore than Dick Proenneke.  I can imagine one bit of his experience as I’ve built my own cabin from scratch using wood from the surrounding property, but I had the benefit of a chain saw. Dick did it all by hand, including a stone hearth and chimney.  One thing that I found amazing when reading the book is that not only did he use only hand tools, to save on weight he only packed in the axe heads and other steel items and built the handles after he got there.  Who does that????  It would be such a daunting task for me I would certainly quickly feel overwhelmed to think that I had to build my axe handle before starting to build my cabin.

Thankfully Dick kept a journal of all of his activities which is now a book “One Man’s Wilderness”  and shot lots and lots of film, which is now a movie ” Alone in the Wilderness”, both of which are available at the end of this post.  I am so thankful that he had the forethought to know that there are many of us that would relish and envy his life.

The book begins with one of my favorite poems by Robert Service – I’m Scared of it All;

I’m scared of it all, God’s truth! so I am;
It’s too big and brutal for me.
My nerve’s on the raw and I don’t give a damn
For all the “hoorah” that I see.
I’m pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again –
I’m scared of the terrible town.

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.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I’m lonesome — I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus,
And seeking the lost caribou;
I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows
To the kick of my little canoe.
I’d like to be far on some weariful shore,
In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear;
Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more,
For I know I am safer up there!

I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest;
I cringe — I’m so weak and so small.
I can’t get my bearings, I’m crushed and oppressed
With the haste and the waste of it all.
The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat,
The fear in the faces I see;
The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret –
It’s too bleeding cruel for me.

I feel it’s all wrong, but I can’t tell you why –
The palace, the hovel next door;
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,
The crush and the rush and the roar.
I’m trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;
I cower in the crash and the glare;
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,
For I know that it’s safer up there!

I’m scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear
The voice of my solitudes call!
We’re nothing but brute with a little veneer,
And nature is best after all.
There’s tumult and terror abroad in the street;
There’s menace and doom in the air;
I’ve got to get back to my thousand-mile beat;
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet;
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet;
Good-bye, for it’s safer up there.

To be forming good habits up there;
To be starving on rabbits up there;
In your hunger and woe,
Though it’s sixty below,
Oh, I know that it’s safer up there!

In 1998 Dick entrusted his cabin and cache to the Park Service, after spending some 30 years alone in the Alaskan Wilderness.  What an adventure it must have been.  The Park Service is maintaining it as a historic site, and there was an agreement that he could return to stay in his cabin anytime he wished.

Dick lived out the last years of his life with his brother in California, and passed on Easter Sunday 2oo3 at the age of 87, reportedly from a stroke.

An amazing man, and an amazing life…thankfully he allowed us to share some of it.


 

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The Way Life Should Be

 

Having a cocktail sitting on the porch in front of an open fire, with a snowshoe hare pausing in it’s nightly travels to stare for a second.  Listening  to the rain pattering on the roof during the night, with a small warming fire in the woodstove.  Hearing the sounds of the forests without the clamor of other people – the drops of rain dripping from the trees onto the forest floor.   A bird in the hemlock singing in the morning despite the dreary weather.   Going to the small store down the road for breakfast and being asked if I want my bacon soft or crunchy, and whether or not I want onions in my home fries hon.  Having more food served than I can eat for less than six bucks.  Overhearing the owner offer someone that had some bad luck  breakfast on the house, and intentionally paying that forward by leaving a hefty tip for my more than I could eat breakfast eliciting a “God Bless you Dear”.  Stepping outside for a pee at two in the morning to realize again that when there is no man-made light for miles, it never really gets dark.  Even in  the rain I could see some of my shadowy surroundings.  Moments to live for, and the way life should be.

 

Posted by fuck0500 in Maine Life

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A Beast Caged in the Heart of the City

I long to awake in the morning, and put on an old flannel shirt and corduroy pants that are mended and moccasins covered with dirt – I care not a cuss where the place is, nor how far away it may be, so long as its up in the open where I can unleash and be free.

Anon 1947

I remember a line in a book I was reading years ago that said you could blindfold someone and put them on the tarmac in any city, and all they would be able to tell you is where they weren’t.   If you think about that for a minute you’ll realize it’s true.  Everything looks the same, there is no uniqueness or individuality.   As much as people complain (yet still go) to Wal Mart, as Americans we’re essentially living in one to some extent.

It always surprised me at the University of Maine when a student from an urban area of a different state would exclaim that there was nothing to do here.  It’s true that you can’t go hit a few comedy clubs at 11pm if you want, and there is a small part of me that misses that too.  But had I gone to college in an urban setting I would have said there is nothing to do here too.  We had a great time in college – we hunted, fished, explored, snowmobiled, and canoed.  I’ll always remember cutting classes on the first day of partridge season to go hunting in the warm October sun, and hanging out in the (now defunct) Rams Horn and Oronoka listening to live music in an intimate atmosphere.

Kids growing up these days aren’t exposed to the “other “ side of life that much anymore, and it wanes with each passing year.  As Aldo Leopold aptly said – “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is supposing that food comes from the grocery store, and the other is that heat comes from the furnace.”  I would propose that his quote has more meaning today than ever.   With the unstable economies around the world, food prices being jacked up out of site because our nation’s corn is being converted to ethanol, and fuel prices never going back to the levels they were before, I think it behooves all of us to revisit the skills of our past.  There is a fantastic book called “back to basics” that pretty much has everything in it you would ever need to know on how to take care of yourself and become independent again.

Land in rural areas of this country is still cheap to buy.   When I built my cabin I had very rudimentary carpentry skills and yet with some determination was able to clear and stump a spot, cut, peel, and lug out of the woods each cedar log, and build it from scratch using hand tools.    Imagine no mortgage, no utility bill, and a small food bill.  Imagine the satisfaction of being independent, of not being tied to the latest woes of the economy.  Imagine no longer being a beast caged in the heart of the city.

Here is a video of camp going up.  I started harvesting the wood in 2003 and 2004.  In the fall of 2004 the cement piers went in – 2005 it got build, and in early 2006 I finished the inside.

 

Posted by fuck0500 in Hunting, Maine Life, Trapping

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Jordan Pond – Acadia National Park

I used to  ice fish most of the weekends during the winter on Jordan Pond which is in Acadia National Park. It is a rugged looking area especially in the winter. The pond has mountains erupting from the east and west sides which create a wind tunnel effect and the wind is often blowing consistently there. Jordan Pond is deep – upwards of 150 feet in some places and multiple springs that used to make the portable depth finder on my canoe go haywire and not be able to find bottom. Lake trout (togue) and landlocked salmon are found within it’s depths. It was originally part of the ocean and carved during the last ice age which also left a large erratic rock on top of one of the mountains next to the pond known as Bubble Rock. As the glacier melted till was deposited at the south end of the pond and cut it off from the ocean. On the west side of the pond is an area known as the tumbledown where rocks from the glacial age continue to fall to this day, especially in the spring. On the left side of the pond before the tumbledown is an area known as ice cove where ice used to be harvested in the days before we had electricity for refrigeration. My family still has pictures of the ice being harvested with large hand saws that cut the ice into blocks. During the winter months ice shanties dot the ice which people use to stay warm when they go fishing. They are typically eight by 12 with windows to view the tip ups outside used for fishing. Some have wood stoves in them and some are heated by propane, and some are even heated simply by the sun. I had one of those shacks and ventured out one weekend day when the temperature was 22 below 0. There was little wind that morning but I froze on the way out to the shack. After warming up some by the fire I kindled in the woodstove, I ventured out and drilled the first hole of the day as the sun was beginning to peak onto the ice. The auger I used drilled a 10 inch hole and after getting the tip up out and ready to go, a process that only took a few minutes at the most the hole had frozen enough that I had to break the ice with my foot and re-clear the ice from the hole. I stood and watched as the hole refroze again. I cleared the ice and again stood to watch the water freeze. It seemed to fill up with tiny air bubbles, almost as if boiling water without the rolling boil. I watched the phenomenon a couple of more times, and then drilled a new hole for the next tip up. By then the wind had begun to pick up a little bit and the small smelts I was using for bait would literally freeze solid in the few seconds it was out of the bucket, put on the hook, and into the drilled hole. By this time I was feeling that this was a futile attempt to try to catch a fish, packed up and went home, but I’ll always remember the day that I watched water freeze.

Posted by fuck0500 in Acadia National Park, Fishing, Maine Life

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