So here it is: the long awaited profile I wrote of Sigurd
Olson. Mind you, it is not the most riveting piece of writing, although I did
enjoy writing it. I stand by my recommendation last time of encouraging anyone
to read some of his work if they haven’t. If you’ve never had the opportunity
to experience the North woods, after reading an essay or two of Olson’s, I can
almost guarantee you’ll want to! Enjoy!
Of
Time and Place: A Profile of Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982)
 |
| Sigurd Olson |
“Simplicity in all things is
the secret of the wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons.”—Sigurd Olson
Simple
joys. A way of life. A corridor into the past. A hope for the future. This is
what Sigurd Olson sees as he sits on an outcrop of Pre-Cambrian greenstone jutting
out from Listening Point, overlooking the south end of Burntside Lake at the
border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He peers thoughtfully at the glassy
surface of the water with one knee pulled up and an arm resting on it, a pipe
casually held in his hand.
Olson spent the better part of sixty years conveying the importance of
wilderness preservation. Nature and the wilderness were never far from his mind
or his reach. Hunting, fishing and trapping were regular activities of his
childhood in northern Wisconsin and later, teaching, guiding, reflecting and
writing at the edge of what became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area became the norm.
It was through his quiet wisdom and intimate relationship with the natural
world that Olson arguably became one of the most influential and active
conservationists and nature writers of the twentieth century.
The
middle of three sons, Sigurd Ferdinand Olson was born in Chicago, Illinois in
April of 1899 to Lawrence J. Olson, a Swedish Baptist minister, and Ida May Cederholm.
When Sigurd was seven years old, the family moved to Sister Bay on the Door
County peninsula where his father’s job was to modernize the practice of the
Baptist faith by introducing English language services to the congregation.
From there, the Olson family moved to the small logging village of Prentice,
Wisconsin before finally settling in Ashland on the shores of Chequamegon Bay.
Sigurd’s passion
and attachment for nature and outdoor recreation began at early age. With the
exception of his grandmother, Olson later recalled for the Minneapolis Star that “nobody
understood why on earth I had to be running off in the woods all the time.”
His father and mother held little
interest in the outdoors, except to fish or picnic occasionally. And unlike his
brothers, Olson’s childhood days were passionately filled with fishing,
hunting, exploring, and running trap lines, a phase he termed his “Daniel Boone
Days.”
In the summer
after he completed his degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sigurd began
to reacquaint himself with the north woods after spending the previous summers
working on the farm of his future father-in-law. He was offered a job teaching
animal husbandry, agricultural botany, and geology at two neighboring high
schools in northern Minnesota. As soon as classes let out for the weekend he
packed his camping gear and took off into the woods.
The next summer in
June 1921, Sigurd embarked on his first canoe trip into the Quetico-Superior
wilderness. This trip left a profound effect on Sigurd and he documented it
fairly extensively. In one entry, the
draw of the land on him is immeasurable: “This is beautiful. Everything is as
God made it, untouched by man. My dreams have come true. I’ve seen wild country
and have not been disappointed.” This first canoe country trip seemed to lay
the foundation for a new phase in his love affair with the wilderness as well
as sow the seed he felt for writing. Shortly after this trip, he published his
first feature article for the Milwaukee
Journal with the help of his brother describing his trip.
After his marriage
to Elizabeth Uhrenholdt in August 1921, Sigurd resumed teaching, although his
thoughts rested mostly on spending more time outdoors and more time writing. To
assuage his need to be outdoors, Sigurd decided that returning to Madison to
become a field geologist might be the right decision. Even though his
instructors left a lasting impression on him, Sigurd dropped out after one
semester, likely after discovering his impending fatherhood.
Sigurd returned to
teaching once more in February 1923, not because he enjoyed it, but most likely
because it was a stable source of income. He and Elizabeth moved to the edge of
the wilderness in Ely, Minnesota where Sigurd began teaching at the high
school. It was in his outdoor classroom
where Sigurd was in his element; where he could convey the sense of wonder he
felt in experiencing nature first hand.
To compensate in
the summer months, Sigurd took a job as a wilderness guide, becoming intimately
acquainted with all the major canoe routes, the best camp sites, the best
places to fish, and the whole of the Quetico-Superior. He often turned the
trips he led into more than just fishing expeditions. To him, they were
opportunities to teach about the lay of the land, its geology, the flora and fauna,
and its cultural history. Despite hectic summers spent as a guide, Sigurd began
to find a new meaningful purpose and a sense of peace and contentment through
his trips into the wilderness. To him, “wilderness is a spiritual necessity, an
antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and
equilibrium.” Time spent in the outdoors became an elixir to maintain
simplicity and balance in his life.
The year of 1925
marked Sigurd’s entry into the realm of conservation activism, which continued
until his death in 1982. The U.S. Forest Service proposed bisecting the canoe
country with roads to ease the movement of people and equipment in the event of
forest fires and local business owners wanted to boost the tourism sector. Though
there were areas of the region designated as wilderness areas, roads were
subsequently built, opening the door for more development, considerably
shrinking the American side of the Quetico-Superior Wilderness.
In 1947, after
resigning as the dean of Ely Junior College, Sigurd decided to pursue writing
full-time and become a professional conservationist. In the years leading up to
this decision, Sigurd had written numerous essays and articles reflecting on
his life in the wilderness, the nostalgia of a bygone era, plant and animal
life, and most importantly to Sigurd, the need to preserve the wilderness. In
the years following 1947, Sigurd rose prominently as a writer and as a
conservationist leader. The skills he had gained as a wilderness guide and an educator also
proved to be advantageous in his years as a leader of the wilderness
perseveration movement, especially in defusing tension between strong-willed Congress
members and environmentalists. He served as vice president and president of
both the National Parks Association and the Wilderness Society and was
instrumental in drafting the Wilderness Act which set the stage for the
Wilderness Preservation system in the U.S. In 1978, the Boundary Waters Canoe
Area was granted full wilderness status, fifty years after Sigurd’s first
efforts to protect it. Throughout these years, he continued to publish many
articles and essays in addition to nine books outlining the wonder and awe of
nature and the wilderness.
In the few years
leading up to his death, Sigurd had been in poorer health, having undergone treatment
for colon cancer in 1979 and never fully regaining his strength. At the time of
his death in 1982, though, Sigurd felt well enough and decided to go for a hike
on snowshoe. It was during this hike that he suffered a fatal heart attack. He had
just completed his ninth and last book, Of
Time and Place, published after his death.
Sigurd Olson spent
the better part of sixty years expressing the importance of wilderness
preservation and simple beauty of nature itself. Through his quiet wisdom and
intimate relationship with the natural world, Sigurd became one of the most
influential and active conservationists and nature writers of the twentieth
century. His last typed words embody the very pioneer spirit he advocated and
the sense of wonder he felt at the turning point of his life. Before he left
his cabin, he wrote that, “a new adventure is coming up and I know it’s going
to be a good one” and that “as long as there are young men with the light of adventure
in their eyes or a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run.”
Quotes, timeline of events, and vision of Sigurd Olson
referenced from:
Backes, David. Wilderness Within: the Life of Sigurd Olson.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print.
Backes, David and
Sigurd Olson. The Meaning of Wilderness:
Essential Articles and Speeches. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2001. Print.
The Wilderness World
of Sigurd Olson. Video
