FREE
Nathan Attwood
Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church
"Of course, there is great gain with godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these." 1 Timothy 6:6-8.
In 1968, a 51-year-old diesel mechanic named Dick Proenneke left civilization and moved to the Alaskan wilderness to begin building a cabin that would become his home for the next 30 years. Several aspects of Proenneke's past life converged into his choice and empowered his capacity both to live in this remarkable way and also to tell the story in a way that made him a legendary naturalist.
Proenneke enlisted in the Navy immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and worked as a carpenter throughout his military career. This experience gave him the carpentry skills he used to build his cabin by hand with no power tools and wood from the trees around the site. He had a Navy buddy who had a vacation cabin in land that became the Lake Clark National Park and had visited the cabin on vacation. His friend allowed him to use the cabin while he built his own cabin nearby. Another friend had a lease on land in the park and gave Proenneke the lease as a gift when he found out he was terminally ill.
Proenneke was an amateur nature photographer and he used an 8 millimeter video camera to record the construction of the cabin and other aspects of his solitary life. He also kept extensive journals. The videos and journals were used by others to produce fascinating, serene, almost hypnotic documentaries that combine a record of a master craftsman demonstrating lost woodworking techniques along with some of the most breathtaking records of untouched wilderness imaginable. Youtube has countless videos of Proenneke if you want to see him at work yourself.
Proenneke's story fascinates me for many reasons. In a former life, I worked as a cabinet builder and trim carpenter. I have such an appreciation for what Proenneke accomplished in his woodworking, not only in terms of craftsmanship, but also for his immense physical strength and endurance. Proenneke was exactly the age I am now when he first cut the spruce trees he would use to build his cabin. He carried massive logs, stones for the chimney, he ripped boards with a handsaw, he worked for twelve hours a day of hard physical labor and moved quickly and effortlessly. He sculpted door hinges with a chisel, made his own chairs, made the bed of the cabin with gravel he carried from the creekside. He really was a wonder of a builder.
Of course, his story is just as fascinating because he was able to survive in such remote and harsh conditions. Proenneke raised, caught, hunted, or foraged nearly all his food. Oftentimes temperatures were more than 50 degrees below zero. He hiked thousands of miles through the Alaskan wilderness, encountering bears, caribou, wolverines, and all manner of wildlife. He toted water from the lake, traveled by canoe and snowshoe. He lived in the cabin year round until he was 83 years old and finally was physically unable to maintain the lifestyle and moved to California to live with his brother until his death from a stroke at 86.
Proenneke lived in solitutude, but he was not a hermit. He maintained significant correspondence with friends and family. Especially as the area he lived became a known part of a National Park, he had an increasing number of visitors and he welcomed them all. His lifestyle was made possible because he never married or had children, but he did enjoy meaningful relationships and was no misanthrope.
Why did he live such a radically different way? In his own words, Proenneke described how one day working as a diesel mechanic in 1965, and explosion splattered molten lead onto his face and into his eyes. His eyesight was seriously damaged and took more than a year to recover. He decided that if he was able to see again, he wanted to spend his life looking at things he wanted to see. So he spent the rest of his life carefully observing the beauty of creation.
In one doumentary, Proenneke was hiking the mountains around the lake. As he looked at the majestic mountains, he said, "I wondered at that moment there was anyone as free and happy." More than the woodworking or the survivalism or the beautiful nature views, the part of the Proenneke story that draws me the most is the freedom.
Proenneke's bold choice to step away from standard society to be alone in nature is not unique in human history, of course. The Old Testament tells us men of God lived in prophetic communities away from society to pray and prophesy. John the Baptist preached from the wilderness, perhaps in some relationship with the Qumran community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, certainly in similar area and with a similar sense of fleeing a degraded culture. Early Christians fled the culture of the Roman Empire to pray in the Egyptian desert and the wilderness of central Asia Minor. They, like Proenneke, left writings about their experience, writings that have survived to the present day.
Not all solitaries are religious solitaries, of course. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote a powerful philosophical musing based on his experiment in solitary naturalistic living in "Walden." Proenneke's solitary naturalistic life had no explicitly religious or philosophical purpose. He wanted to use his eyesight to see things he wanted to see. He wanted to hike, fish, build with his hands. He wanted to be free.
Few of us will ever live life as a solitary life Dick Proenneke or John the Baptist or the Desert Fathers or Thoreau (though the degree of Thoreau's solitude is debated by historians). Still, all of these solitaries and naturalists, even with their very different reasons for stepping away from standard human society, took pains to offer the lessons and gifts of the solitude to others. They wrote, took visitors, gave witness. What does Proenneke teach us?
When he looked at the mountains and said he was more free than anyone, what did he mean? I was thinking about that very thing while is was cutting my grass the other day. I love my lawn, but it does require maintenance. I love my house, but it requires maintenance. I love my famiiy. My family requires maintenance, too. My car requires maintenance. My body requires increasing maintenance. My job requires constant maintenance. God has blessed me with many things. Each blessing has to be cleaned, tended to, taken care of, secured, protected, labored over.
We tend to always want more. We rarely count the cost of more--the implicit promise of perpetual care and attention each thing will require when we get it. In my world, the church world, I have often seen churches build building without truly counting the cost of additional utilities, maintenance, staffing, programming, insurance, etc. They just want more but don't think of the long term cost of more.
Proenneke's sense of freedom from escaping all that is alluring is instructive to me. He totes water. He builds an outhouse. I don't want to live like that, and since I have a family, I wouldn't have the option even if I did. But it made me think about replacing my well pump, tending to toilets and fixtures and water heaters and plumbers. I've put a lot of time, energy, and money into the luxury of running water. I wouldn't have it any other way, of course, but it's worth noting that my decision to have modern plumbing binds me to care for it. I'm not free from the consequences of the "convenience" of running water in my home.
It's worthwhile to learn from someone who opts out that opting out brings freedom. It's worthwhile to count the cost for the things we want when we want more things to know that when we seek more we are also signing up for limitations to be placed upon our freedom.
Paul writes Timothy to tell him that contentment is a great gift. God has given us a lot. Perhaps the greatest thing I can learn from a man like Dick Proenneke is to ask myself how I can live a little more simply, how my life can be a little less cluttered, how I can be more content and want less.
When God took flessh and became a human in Jesus Christ, he said he had no place to lay his head. He left nothing when he died but a single seamless robe. And yet, he lived truly free. Lord, help us learn how to become a little more free.