Alone in the Wilderness

At the age of fifty-one, Dick Proenneke hiked into the Alaskan wilderness, built his own log cabin, and lived off the land until, at the age of eighty-two, he decided the fifty-below winters were just a bit too brutal and moved back to the continental US. Not only was he a profoundly gifted carpenter, he was also a filmmaker and writer. He shot a documentary, entitled Alone in the Wilderness, all by his lonesome during the first year or so of his endeavor. He wrote a book by the same name. The documentary is beautiful, concise, and thoughtfully executed.