Dick Proenneke is fifty years old when he decides to build a log cabin by hand at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, on the shore of Twin Lakes in what is now Lake Clark National Park, and to live there alone. He films the work himself, so the footage covers everything: felling and notching logs, fitting a door frame without nails, curing meat, and reading the ice on the lake to judge how soon winter will close in. The film follows his first year in-country, from choosing the homestead site through the return of spring, with narration drawn from Proenneke's own journals describing the day's chores and the wildlife that passes through camp, including a curious bear and the sheep on the ridges above the water. There is no crew, no reenactment, and no score competing with the quiet; the color footage he shot in the late 1960s is the reason to watch. It ends the way a year like this ends: with the cabin standing and Proenneke still there.