“Hello Mr. Ptarmigan, it’s old Uncle Brown back in the country again!”
This is how Brown Carlson warned the bears when he walked his 100-mile-long trapline with his two pack-dogs.
Carlson, a legendary Lake Clark homesteader, arrived in the area in 1904 via Chignik Lagoon, where he had jumped ship into the frigid waters and swam away from his life as a Norwegian sailor. After he made his way north to Lake Clark, he built a log cabin on the north shore, in the area then known as Portage Creek Village, and lived there for nearly six decades.
Born about 200 yards from his cabin, Anne Coray was Carlson’s neighbor when she was a small child. In 2001, Coray and her husband Steve Kahn acquired Carlson’s cabin. After years of watching the cabin sink further into the ground, they realized it would completely collapse if they didn’t do something. So they decided to rebuild.
“I thought because I’d grown up hearing stories about Brown from my mother and brothers that I knew him well, but when Steve and I set out to rebuild Brown’s cabin, I realized there was a lot about him that I didn’t know,” says Coray in the film.
“We also ended up learning a lot more about Alaska history and the history of this area, and we discovered some unexpected friendships,” adds Kahn.
From growing Lake Clark’s most prolific strawberry patch to setting bear traps by hand, to his once-a-year bath, friends and neighbors recount Brown’s many “feats and foibles” as Coray and Kahn rebuild the cabin log by log.
“Rebuilding Brown,” a new documentary written by Coray and Kahn, both notable Alaskan authors, is as much a tribute to a legendary Alaskan homesteader as it is a documentary about the process of rebuilding a severely dilapidated log cabin in rural Alaska. The couple worked with Homer editor Silas Firth to finish the film.
“We wanted to keep Brown’s memory alive in the way that my family had kept it alive for me,” Coray said. “(He) was such a character.”
“Rebuilding Brown” will play on May 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Bear Tooth Theatre. Craig Coray, Anne’s brother and the principal storyteller in the film, will be available for a Q&A following the screening. Tickets can be purchased online through the Bear Tooth Theatre.
Part of the proceeds of the film will benefit the Alaska Historical Society, the fiscal sponsor for the project.
Correction: An earlier version of this story included a photo caption with an incorrect year.
This article was published in partnership with Arts Anchorage.
Emily is an Anchorage-based graphic designer, writer and musician. She is the founder of Arts Anchorage.