A family living remotely in Alaska.

[Mortblanc]

Mind that I am not being oppositional or claiming that people do not succeed in the bush, it is just that most do not succeed as shown on the A&E network or the Discovery Channel. They do not show the divorce rates for couples living in the bush, or the fact that some of the people they are filming are simply "not quite right".

I also hold many of these people in high regard, but often the film edits do not show the entire story and the life is not easy, and is unacceptable by many.

And even folks living in the bush have financial problems to deal with. They live under pressure just like the rest of us and if they fail in their endeavors there is no safety net for them.

Only a woman that had grown up in a hippy van parked down by the river would consider a shack surrounded by 15 foot snow drifts for 8 months a year a good life. Heimo is married to a native woman who grew up in the bush and considers a can of peaches and a head lamp luxury items. A few years back their cabin burned to the ground and they spent the rest of the winter at -50 in a tent. Fortunately they had their 'remote location" set up just for an emergency of this sort. He spent a good deal of the next summer scrounging nails from the burned ruin, waiting for building materials to be shipped in. Miraculously his cabin was finished in time for winter even though the materials were delayed until the first snow flakes were flying.

Most women would have been on the next bush plane headed for civilization, and who could blame them? It would be the sensible thing to do when you are already past the age of rebuilding a cabin in the wilderness without help.

I am not as old as Heimo and it is all I can do to maintain a modern shack with the home improvement center 20 miles away. I am wondering who exactly rebuilt the homestead? Might that have been the discovery Channel crew doing what they had to do to keep the old reel rolling?

His constant on screen ramblings include meditation on how much longer the couple will be able to live in the bush.

Dick Proenneke was also an admirable man and I envy his ingenuity and craftsmanship. He was a single man in his late 40s when he entered the bush and had no family to consider. Only a single bachelor, high ranking member of the geezerhood, could consider a temperature of +5 indoors a cozy situation.

And Dick Proeneke was on disability income from a work related injury. He had steady money coming to him to pay for all those supplies flown in my bush plane every few months.

And in the end Dick did not die in his cabin. He died in an old folks home in the city.