“I have found that some of the simplest things have given...

“I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure"⁠ said Dick Proenneke.

⁠For 30 years, Dick Proenneke lived in complete isolation in a cabin he built by hand on the shores of Alaska’s Twin Lakes. With no telephone, electricity, or even running water, he lived the sort of life that’s unimaginable in the modern world.

After an eye injury that threatened to leave him blind in the late 1960s Proenneke wanted to put down roots far from civilization by building his own cabin amid the natural beauty of the Twin Lakes region.

Proenneke arrived at Upper Twin Lake in 1967 at the age of 51 determined to scout out the best construction site for his cabin.

A master craftsman, he used local materials, simple tools, and human ingenuity to craft a home and life in keeping with the wilderness. He harvested spruce trees that summer and in 1968 began construction on what would become his cabin and wilderness home during the next thirty years.