Friends of Dick Proenneke

Dick Proenneke spent roughly 30 years living in the Alaskan bush in a cabin he built with his own two hands. NPS photo.

One of the more popular posts on the original National Parks Traveler was about Dick Proenneke, a modern-day mountain man if ever there was one who headed off to Alaska in 1967 to live in the wilderness. I often learned that folks discovered the Traveler site by Googling for Dick.

Well, now there's a Yahoo! Groups page dedicated to him.

For those of you who've been around from the Traveler's beginning, you probably recall that Mr. Proenneke's claim to fame was cemented by a PBS show on his days spent at Lake Clark, which eventually became Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. How he managed to live for 30-some years at the cabin he built with his two hands at Twin Lakes is inspirational for those of us who treasure the wilderness, self-reliance, and self-determination.

It'll be interesting to watch the group site and read the stories folks share there in terms of what Mr. Proenneke meant to them.