The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke by Monroe Robinson is a 456-page, full-color hardcover from Lost Art Press about the tools Dick Proenneke used and the things he made during 30 years in the Alaskan wilderness.
Many people first met Proenneke through the PBS program Alone in the Wilderness. On the shore of Twin Lakes he built his cabin and nearly everything in it, from the wooden hinges on the door to the metal ice creepers he strapped to his boots. In 1999, at 82, he left Twin Lakes and gave the cabin and its contents to the National Park Service, and Robinson and his wife, K. Schubeck, cared for it for 19 summers starting in 2000. The book draws on more than 7,000 pages of Proenneke's transcribed journals, with hundreds of photos, dozens of illustrations and Robinson's commentary; one entry walks through making a cutting board from a spruce slab, rubbed with bacon grease. It's part how-to, part adventure and memoir, for woodworkers, toolmakers, homesteaders and anyone drawn to a simple, self-reliant life.
It's printed in full color on coated #80 matte paper, 8-1/2 x 11 in, and bound in green cotton cloth with a diestamp of the cabin. It has no dust jacket, but Lost Art Press offers a free one on its website that you can print on a large-format printer.
Woodworkers John Hoffman and Christopher Schwarz founded Lost Art Press in 2007. Its books ship from a warehouse in Covington, Kentucky, and are printed in the United States.
