FREE! REAL events M A G A Z I N E pagepage 13 13 MENDOCINO COAST PROPERTY Volume 26 . Number 4 . Issue 642 . Mendocino County’s Own Real Estate Publication . September 28, 2012 . Published Monthly Twin Souls/Twin Lives Mendocino Coast couple K Schubeck and Monroe Robinson split each year between Little River and wildest Alaskan wilderness RESIDENTIAL | COMMERCIAL | LAND | BUSINESSES Page 2 Real Estate Magazine September 28, 2012 LITTLE RIVER, CALIFORNIA/TWIN LAKES, ALASKA Twin Souls/Twin Lives Story and Photographs by Monroe Robinson and K Schubeck eaving the seaside cliffs and redwood forests Knowing a bear may claim our food at any time, we of Mendocino for the summer to go to a remote remove Dick Proenneke’s canoe from inside “Spike’s wilderness cabin in Alaska has become our Cabin” and haul our supplies into its safety. Spike’s Llifestyle for the past thirteen years. We leave Cabin, a roughly constructed seasonal sport hunter’s behind supporting friends, a beautiful home and garden, log cabin, built before this was a national park, is our and all the amenities, from electricity and hot running home for the duration of our stay here. It measures 11 water to telephone and Internet. We pause as we ready ft. X 15 ft. and has a gravel floor, two small, screened ourselves to fly to Anchorage, asking if we are up to this windows, and a screen door to let light in, while holding adventure another year. The answer is clear as once again some of Alaska’s famously huge mosquitoes at bay. A we board the four-passenger floatplane that takes us galvanized garbage can buried in the gravel floor is our into some of the most spectacular unspoiled wilderness refrigerator and a solar shower hung from the ridge log in America, hundreds of miles from the nearest human affords our bath. We haul cold, pure water in buckets enclaves. The magnificent land with its glacier-filled from the lake with no fear of Giardia. A recycled solar valleys, turquoise lakes and wild rivers, rich with brown panel hooked to a 12-volt battery charges the many bear, barren ground caribou and grey wolf, becomes batteries we use for cameras, cordless drill and two- our second home. Observing the interconnected lives of way radio communication. K’s old kayak and our feet wildlife in an untrammeled wilderness draws us north each summer. take care of all our transportation needs. There are no roads within a hundred miles, and The single engine floatplane, so common in “bush” Alaska, touches down on trails are maintained by the creatures that make this wilderness their home. pristine water, avoiding the last chandler ice. The milky glacial water we saw on We are sometimes asked what it is like to live in the silence of wilderness, but wilderness our departure from Twin Lakes last fall has settled to the clarity of a rare blue jewel is not silent. The refrigerator does not start and stop nor are there the other sounds of a under winter’s ice. We look around at mountains that are streaked with deep snow Mendocino home or the road outside. There is no lawn mower at Twin Lakes and only a hand and know the slopes will be changing daily before our eyes, from brown to green. saw for cutting our cooking and heating fuel. But the wilderness is full of sound, and deeply A quick look through the spotting scope lets us know the golden eagles are again listening to those sounds is one of the avenues into learning about and understanding what active at their cliff-side nest across the lake. We discover three torn window screens is all about you. You start to identify not only what bird is calling but what the call means and and boards torn from the outhouse, reminding us we are back in the land of the what to turn your awareness toward. To travel safely in wilderness you keep your ears, your pesky black bear. The new damage to the outhouse elevates our alertness. eyes and your nose alert to what is about you. It becomes second nature and you feel alive through every cell in your body, with an elevated awareness. Standing next to our As volunteers for the National Park Service we greet the six hundred visitors from all four-month supply of corners of the world who come yearly to see Dick Proenneke’s cabin at Twin Lakes in Lake provisions on the shore Clark National Park. Dick Proenneke was arguably the closest thing to a Henry David Thoreau of Twin Lakes, fingers of the twentieth century, except Dick lived over a hundred miles from Anchorage and thirty wrapped together as the miles from his nearest neighbor for thirty-one years. He came to Twin Lakes at fifty-one years floatplane ascends, we of age, in 1968, to see if he could build a finely crafted log cabin with only hand tools and pause again to embrace ‘be content with his own company for an entire year.’ Dick Proenneke arrived as a rugged, our deep connection to meat eating, Alaskan outdoorsman, except for his journaling and filming. On his cabin wall each other and to this is a small, framed question he wrote: “Is it proper that the wilderness and its creatures place. Our souls fill as we should suffer because we came?” Being at Twin Lakes changed Dick. He shot a sheep and warm to the awareness a caribou during his early years at Twin Lakes, but then never shot another big game animal, of the preparations we even though he did remain a meat eater. He began to think of the wildlife as his friends must make now for our Untouched wilderness, like this view of Twin Lakes Big Valley and his neighbors. Dick continued to catch fish and occasionally ate a porcupine when he long stay. We set to work. Shangri-La, has pulled them back to Alaska for thirteen years. heard the porky gnawing on his cabin. Proenneke’s daily journals of his first year at Twin ABOVE: The gravel floored, 11 ft. x 15 ft. cabin, built only with hand tools by Dick Proenneke in the late REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE is a FREE Publication. 1960s and where he lived alone for thirty-one years, is over a hundred miles from Anchorage and thirty The price of a subscription covers the cost of FIRST CLASS MAIL plus a small handling fee. miles from the nearest neighbor. ON OUR COVER: A portrait of K and Monroe superimposed on a view of Yes, I would like to receive REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE for: the connecting stream at Upper Twin Mountains. o 6 months (6 issues) $21.00 REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE Real Estate Magazine o 1 year (12 issues) $40.00 160 South Harold Street Fort Bragg California 95437 tel/ fx: 707.964.1318 Publisher Studio Z Mendocino o Outside the Continental USA: Please Inquire www.realestatemendocino.com Managing Editor/Renewals Lisa Norman [email protected] Please send check or money order to: e-mail: [email protected] Ad Sales 964.1318 [email protected] REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE, 160 South Harold Street, Fort Bragg, CA 95437 REAL ESTATE MAGAZINE, Mendocino Coast Ad Production Joe Neves 707.964.1318 Property is published monthly by Studio Z Mendocino. [email protected] Neither the publisher, nor brokers will be responsible or Graphic Production Zida Borcich Name _____________________________________________________________________ liable for typographical errors, misinformation, misprints, etc. Properties are subject to prior sale. Publisher reserves the (8000 copies monthly) right to accept or reject all editorial and advertising matter. DISTRIBUTION Address _______________________________________________________________ Mendocino, Westport to Fort Bragg, Copyright ©2012. All rights reserved. No part of this Cloverdale, AV Chuck Hathaway City State Zip _______________________________________________________________ publication may be reproduced without the written Little River to Gualala Patti Fereira (Please allow 3 weeks for first delivery) consent of the publisher, Studio Z Mendocino. Willits & Ukiah Patti Fereira Real Estate Magazine September 28, 2012 Page 3 Lakes, edited into the book One Man’s Wilderness, became an to meet them, from black and brown bears, to wolves, to instant classic of living in the Alaskan wilderness. Proenneke eagles. With the bust of the caribou herd and the subsequent filmed himself building his cabin and later worked tirelessly plummeting of predators, our study has morphed into a broader photographing and filming the wilderness and wildlife around understanding of the animals in the area, their relationship to Twin Lakes for the National Park Service. His efforts helped each other, their environment and plant communities in a time to create Lake Clark National Park with Twin Lakes at its of dramatic change. As the climate warms we are watching heart. The video Alone in the Wilderness is one of several that timberline rise up the mountain slopes with forest taking over chronicle his life. Dick Proenneke did all he could to see that what was traditionally alpine tundra. Twin Lakes would be left for future generations to experience wilderness untouched by humans. ver the years we have found and returned to more K and I were drawn to this remote part of Alaska decades than a dozen fox dens, many of which are ancient ago, and separately met Proenneke in our wilderness travels dens with dozens of entrances. Each of these before we met each other. When we did meet, there was Odens has been occupied by at least three different an immediate recognition of our similar values, concerns, mammals at some time during our study. The mammals that passions and commitments, which led eventually to our we have observed at these dens include wolves, foxes, river marriage.