One Man's Adventure - An Alaskan Odyssey

amazon.ca/One-Mans-Wilderness-Alaskan

  From May 1968 until September 1969 Richard Proenneke lived alone in what was to become Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Mr Proenneke was a very resourceful fellow and a talented wood worker.  While on his adventure he built his own cabin with a stove and fire place, the photographs show a  dutch door, windows and a stone chimney.
  
  I have talked about the tool box for living in an apartment, this is the tool kit that Richard Proenneke took to Twin Lakes Alaska to enable him to build his own home, without help:
-wood augers, he made handles once he got there, he appears to have had them in several large sizes
-files, for sharpening tools and working sheet metal
-chisels, including a large gouge used to shape the notches on the logs, also without handles
-draw knife 
-saws, cross cut, rip, and saws for cutting fire wood
-saw set
-honing stone
-vise grip
-screwdrivers
-adze
-plumb bob and line
-string level
-square
-chalk and chalk line
-carpenter's pencils
-galvanized pail containing nails, screws, wire, tape, plaster of Paris and oakum


   With these tools a cabin was built in the wilderness.  Over the course of his time in Alaska there were flights in by a local bush pilot to bring some staple food items and some building supplies.  For example the roof was covered in tar paper and the chimney  was made of local stone and concrete, the bags of concrete were flown in.


   According to the book Richard Proenneke was a well organized and thoughtful worker that had a solid plan in his mind and had scouted out the site for his cabin as well as prepared the logs the previous season.  None the less it was a grand adventure, and one that many people can only imagine themselves living.  


   Mr. Proenneke takes time out from building things to share his feelings about labour.  Clearly he has a strong work ethic and intense focus, he also believes that satisfaction comes from doing a whole job beginning to end, not being a cog in a wheel that only allows a person to do a small part of a job.


   In 2011 almost every job is just a portion of the task not the whole things anymore.  The advances in technology and the increasing complexity of nearly everything we encounter means that almost nothing is made beginning to end by one person, except what we do in our workshops.  Maybe that is the greatest attraction of home workshops and home arts and crafts. We can design the product, prepare the materials, build it and finish it, it is our work and a piece of who we are.


   I don't imagine myself on an Alaskan adventure, though I did want to build my own home, in days of yore, but I do agree with the ideas and spirit of Mr. Richard Proenneke.