Wednesday, December 17, 2008

To Live Your Dream

This is an old obituary, however, I think we could all learn from his life. Alaska Bush author Proenneke dies at 86 ANCHORAGE - Dick Proenneke, who lived alone in a remote cabin and kept journals published as the classic Alaska memoir "One Man's Wilderness," has died at age 86. Proenneke died Easter Sunday in California. Until 1998, Proenneke lived alone in a cabin he built at Twin Lakes in what is now Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. "I call him a modern-day Henry David Thoreau," said John Branson, a Lake Clark park ranger and historian who was a longtime friend of Proenneke's. "Thoreau lived at Walden for only one year. Dick lived there for 30 years." Proenneke moved permanently to Twin Lakes in 1968 at age 52 after retiring as a diesel mechanic and heavy-equipment operator in Kodiak. Branson said Proenneke wanted to live deep in the wilderness out of a need for simplicity rather than to escape. "He was not to be misconstrued as an end-of-the-roader or anti-social at all," Branson told the Anchorage Daily News. "He was extremely hospitable and gracious to visitors." "One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey" was first published in 1973, attracting visitors to Twin Lakes, 20 miles north of Lake Clark in the Alaska Range. The book was reissued in a new format in 1999 and won a National Outdoor Book Award. It may have sold as many as 75,000 copies over the years, a bestseller by Alaska standards, said Sara Juday, regional manager for Alaska Northwest Books, the publisher. "It has a kind of cult status. It has changed people's lives," Juday said.

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