Maybe John Coffer was inspired by Dick Proenneke, a man who retired at 50 in 1967 and went to the wilderness to build himself a cabin and live far away from a ‘civilisation’ that he was finding less and less satisfying. Proeneke spent his first summer looking for a site, cutting down and peeling the logs he needed for his cabin. The following summer he returned to finish the cabin where he lived for thirty years. His skills, which he documents on a 35mm camera mounted on a tripod as he worked, are remarkable.

Like Coffer, Proenneke, used the technology which most responded to the task at hand. Hand-carved handles for his tools (to make it easier to get a sufficient number and variety of tools to his site in the first place) and a 35mm camera to film his work. For thirty years Proenneke remained self-reliant deep in Alaska. Only when he was 82 did he leave his cabin and stay with his brother in California where he died in 2003 at the age of 86.

Not only do his skills and work-ethic  make the gap-year return-to-nature adventurers (see Guy Grieve’s documentary for Channel 4, Escape to Alaska and to a lesser extent Christopher McCandless whose journey into the wilderness of Alaska ended in his death) seem naive, but his quiet determination over such a long period of time has echoes of a different, more timeless, more ‘native’ perspective.

Whilst many share the dream of a back-to-basics gap-year, I don’t think there are many who share Proenneke’s more timeless conviction. Reading his book One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Oddyssey  reminds us, if nothing else, how much we have given away at the behest of ‘comfort’ and how a life of physical work divorced from the reliance it could bring if enabling the self, can be so unsatisfying.