Breath of Wilderness Read online

  Foreword

  Daniel Boone Days

  Decisions, Decisions

  The Meaningof the Outdoors

  National Wilderness Scene

  The Power of Words

  Never Give Up

  Listening Point

  Passing the Torch

  Afterword

  US Conservation Time Line

  Glossary

  Places to Visit

  Take It Outside

  To Learn More

  Major Sources

  For my fellow adventurers and main men: my husband and life partner, Paul Blomquist, and sons Soren and Finn, and my dad, Don, who instilled in me his love of reading.

  With gratitude to Robert K. Olson, Kevin Proescholdt, Candy Fleming, Dave Dempsey, Chuck Wick, and Alanna Dore of the Listening Point Foundation; David Backes, Jeannine Kellogg, Jim Moore, Susan Perry, Blake Hoena, Will Steger, Kate Thompson, Molly Beth Griffin, and Nicole Rom of the Will Steger Foundation; Karen Pick, Carolyn Sobczak, Melanie Roth, and others at Fulcrum Publishing; Karen Backlund, Bette McCormick, Darby Nelson, and Linda Middlestadt of the Great Lakes Visitor Center; the staff at the Minnesota History Center Library and the Ely-Winton Historical Society; the Northwest Minnesota Arts Council; the McKnight Foundation; and everyone else who provided assistance or advice. I am especially grateful for Sigurd Olson, who stood up for his beliefs in the face of tremendous adversity.

  Text © 2014 Kristin Eggerling

  Photographs courtesy of the Olson family: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 24. Photographs

  courtesy of the Listening Point Foundation: 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43. Images courtesy of the Ely-Winton Historical Society: 15, 16, 25, 36, 37. Photographs by Kristin Eggerling: 33, 34, 42, 44. Images used with permission of the Minnesota Historical Society: 31, 32.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review—without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Eggerling, Kristin.

  Breath of wilderness : the life of Sigurd Olson / Kristin Eggerling.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Breath of Wilderness is the story of Sigurd Olson’s love for wild places and how that love transformed his life. It inspired him to play a key role in the movement to preserve wilderness throughout North America, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the largest lakeland wilderness in the country. Olson’s successful writing career, born from his devotion, spread his fervor worldwide. This is a story of one man finding his passion and standing up for what he believed even in the face of tremendous adversity. Olson knew immediately that once the wilderness was gone, it would be gone forever. There would be no getting it back.”--Provided by publisher.

  Audience: Age 9 to 12.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-938486-10-4 (alkaline paper) 1. Olson, Sigurd F., 1899-1982--Juvenile literature. 2. Naturalists--United States--Biography--Juvenile literature. 3. Conservationists--United States--Biography--Juvenile literature. 4. Nature conservation--United States--History--20th century--Juvenile literature. 5. Wilderness areas--United States--History--20th century--Juvenile literature. 6. Outdoor life--United States--History--20th century--Juvenile literature. 7. Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Minn.)--History--Juvenile literature. I. Title.

  QH31.O47E44 2013

  508.092--dc23

  [B]

  2013032573

  Printed in The United States

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Design by Ken Lockwood

  Fulcrum Publishing

  4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100

  Golden, CO 80403

  800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623

  www.fulcrumbooks.com

  Foreword

  I was really excited to meet Sig Olson when I was

  in my teens. He was the first real conservation hero I met in person; for me it was like meeting a famous actor or rock singer. He had been working to protect, preserve, and defend the Boundary Waters

  wilderness for decades; he was a gifted writer; he was a guide and adventurer. He inspired me to

  follow my dreams.

  Sig was a mentor and teacher in a variety of ways. We both kept nature journals starting at a young age. I would get up in the middle of the night to watch the stars and to document meteor showers. I would spend time observing flowers at school and in my backyard. I would study them until I learned every little detail about them. It was these skills that later allowed me to survive in harsh conditions like those in the Arctic.

  Sig inspired me to write. He told me that writing, like nature journaling, took persistence and dedication. Sig was stubborn, but his persistence and stubbornness paid off when it counted. Thanks to Sig’s leadership, and that of so many others, we now have in northeastern Minnesota one of the greatest wildernesses, a place surrounded by lakes and pine trees, where loons, moose, and wolves roam, and where you can venture only by foot and canoe.

  —Will Steger, polar explorer, educator, and

  president of the Will Steger Foundation

  Foreword

  My father, Sigurd Olson, was a trailblazer through history and life. Through the thickets and confusions of his youth and times, he cut a trail to the world of beauty, love, order, and meaning in nature. Like any boy, he loved being out in the woods, learning about wildlife, hunting a deer, being educated by the stern lessons of the northern seasons. But he did not

  Robert Olson (or Bob) and his brother, Sigurd Olson Jr., spent much of their childhood outdoors. Here their father, Sigurd Olson, shows them how to fillet a fish

  wander. Like an Indian guide he followed deer trails or snapped off branches to mark the trail he was making.

  Even as a child, he knew how wonderful it all was. As a man he put it into words like a map for others to follow. He called it wilderness, not as

  an unmapped jungle but as an Eden for our hearts

  and souls.

  The beauty of this book is that Kristin Eggerling has brought his story to a new generation of would-be Sigurds, at that age when we make our greatest decisions. These are not decisions about what we should do with our lives, or about how to make a living, but about discovering, like Sigurd did, what it is that we love and forging a trail of it through the wilderness of our own life and times.

  —Robert K. Olson, president emeritus,

  Listening Point Foundation

  One

  Daniel Boone Days

  Sigurd Olson loved the forests, lakes, streams, and wild creatures more than anything else in the world. Born in Chicago on April 4, 1899, to Lawrence J. and Ida May Cederholm Olson, Sigurd later said, “I should have been born in a log cabin.”

  When Sigurd, or Sig, as most people called him, was five years old, his mother took him to Lincoln Park just north of downtown Chicago. As they walked through a grove of maple trees, he was struck by the blazing colors of the leaves, vivid with fall oranges, reds, and yellows. It was a memory that stayed with him throughout his life.

  Around the age of six, Sig moved with his family to northern Wisconsin, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. The Olsons first lived in the community of Sister Bay on the Door County peninsula. Life there was full of adventure for a boy who loved the outdoors. Sig ran free exploring the woods, shore, swamps, and orchards. At night he listened to the foghorns moaning in the harbor. Later, the family moved to Prentice, a logging and farming town in the north-ce
ntral part of Wisconsin, and then finally to Ashland, in the far northern part of the state along Lake Superior, where he attended high school and college.

  When they were young boys in Sister Bay, Sig and his older brother, Ken, often walked to school together. As Sig shuffled down the path in the early morning, his black lunch pail swinging on his arm, he heard the meadowlarks singing from the fence posts and the trilling of the frogs in the swampy grass.

  Forgetting about the time, he knelt to touch the wildflowers that covered the ground. He marveled at the delicate sky blue petals before pressing his nose into them to breathe in their subtle fragrance. He thought to himself, “I love the music of the frogs, the birds, and the smell of wildflowers.”

  Ida May and baby Sigurd, Sig’s brother Kenneth, and his

  father, L.J. (or Lawrence), around 1889 or 1890

  Just then his brother Ken reminded him to hurry up or they would be late for school. Sig ignored him and grinned broadly as he picked a few of the flowers to give to his teacher.

  “These will make Mr. Yates as happy as they make me feel,” he murmured. He didn’t care that his thoughtfulness would encourage his classmates to call him “Teacher’s Pet.”

  Even at school he spent more time yearning for the outdoors than studying spelling. Mr. Yates, a strict teacher, conducted regular spelling bees by lining up all the students in a row along a crack in the floor and giving them each a word to spell. When a child misspelled a word, a look of displeasure crossed Mr. Yates’s stern face, followed by a whack across the student’s hand with a ruler.

  More than once, Sigurd spelled a word wrong because he was distracted, staring out the schoolroom window and daydreaming about afternoon fishing plans. Mr. Yates, with the threatening ruler in his hand, would point first at the dunce cap, then at the corner. Seething, Sig grabbed the cap, shoved it on his head, and trudged over to the corner to sulk. “I wish I was outside,” he grumbled to himself. Still, even though he struggled with spelling, Sig was drawn to words, feeling their beauty and poetry.

  No one in Sig’s family understood his love for nature, except for his grandmother, who lived with them. Sig and Grandmother shared a special bond because of their passion for the outdoors. She often waited for Sig to return from fishing to admire the trout he caught.

  Grandmother listened intently to his stories while frying the catch. Then they would sit together at the kitchen

  Sigurd was especially close to his grandmother Anna

  Cederholm. Taken in 1916 in Ashland, Wisconsin, this is the last picture of her.

  Sigurd and his trout. One of the first stories he wrote was “Grandmother’s Trout,” which he later included in his book The Singing Wilderness.

  table and eat the feast with freshly baked bread

  and glasses of cold milk.

  During these years, a time in his life he called his Daniel Boone Days, Sig liked to pretend he was Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone and escape by himself to the woods near his home in Prentice. It felt like stepping into another world. There he would create a bed of balsam branches to lie in and watch the birds above and the creatures around him. He found the wilderness mysterious and exciting, and he couldn’t stand to be away from it for long. He later explained that he felt “at one with the great trees, with the birds and squirrels and trout and the sound of the wind in the branches.”

  One day, twelve-year-old Sig ventured into the woods, sat down on a log, and watched as a big doe appeared out of the shadows to drink from the bubbly creek for several minutes before leaping back into the darkness of the forest. As if a spell had been broken, Sigurd’s stomach growled. Wanting to be a true wilderness man and live off the land, he hadn’t brought along any food. He began to search for something to eat. Leaning over, he peered into a shallow spot of water next to the creek and discovered some clams. “Clams are supposed to be good to eat,” he recalled, so he reached in and dug them out, gathered some sticks, and built a fire. He placed the clams on top, roasted them over the coals, and inhaled the smoky aroma. Once they were cooked, he used the shells for plates. Hot juice ran down his chin as he devoured his meal. His heart filled with admiration and love for the nature that surrounded him. He ate until his belly was full, then curled up on his bed of fragrant balsams. “I am as secure as a bear in a cave,” he thought as he fell asleep, perfectly content.

  Sig fished for trout or bass most days and hunted or trapped every chance he got. He especially enjoyed hunting for mallards or rabbits. Later, he skinned, prepared, and cooked the animals before eating them. Each step provided a greater connection with wildlife and was part of the adventure. One day the school janitor, Mr. Johnson, invited Sig to join him and his beagle hound to go rabbit hunting. Sig’s excitement grew each time he saw a rabbit jump up in the alder thicket. The beagle sang as he chased the rabbits round and round before the boom of the shotgun rang out.

  One afternoon, Sig grabbed a bucket and set off to pick cranberries. When he found the tart, red fruit hidden among the greenery, he filled the bucket to the brim and then started for home, eating a few along the way. As he wandered, a stirring caught his attention, and he turned to see what was making the noise. He couldn’t believe it. Right in front of him was a bear. He tore off running faster than ever, tripped, and fell, dumping his berries into the bushes. Scared for his life, he shot up and bolted home. Even though the bear had frightened him, Sig couldn’t stay away from the wilderness for long.

  Young Sig was especially fascinated with squirrels and longed to have one as a pet. He thought that if he caught one he would be capturing a part of nature, making his life complete. Sig sat for hours and watched them gather nuts and chase up and down the trees, chattering constantly. He learned from an older boy how to construct a box trap and set to work to build one. He planned to catch a pair of squirrels and keep them inside the screen porch of his house.

  One day he placed the trap on the end of a log and filled it with a handful of hazelnuts he had gathered. He lurked at the base of a great pine tree, noticing the brown and green needles that covered the forest floor. He listened to his heart pounding as he held his breath. Wishing he could become invisible, he imagined that he was a hunter waiting for his prey. He spied a squirrel peering into the trap. Then, in a flash, it scurried in and the trap door crashed down with a bang. He rushed over to make sure the latch was tightly shut, hastily grabbed the trap with the squirrel inside, and ran for home lickety-split. A few days later he returned and repeated the process, capturing its mate.

  Sig cared for his pair of squirrels with complete dedication. He fed them the finest nuts and pinecones and lined their cage with the greenest, softest hemlock branches he could find. He unraveled an old sweater to make a comfortable nest. The squirrels adjusted to their new home and began to wait patiently for their meals. Sig grew mesmerized by their antics and loved studying the white rings around their eyes, the black stripes down their sides, and especially their bushy tails.

  In the spring he noticed that the female had begun to line the nest with her fur, a telltale sign that she would soon have babies. Sig hovered around the cage like an anxious parent. One day he peered into the nest and found three soft, pink baby squirrels snuggled there. He was so excited, he couldn’t eat or play and spent every moment he could near the cage. Later Sig reached down and picked up the babies one by one. He gently stroked their fur and fed them out of his hand. It was a dream come true for him, but it would be short lived.

  The next day he returned home to discover the squirrels missing and a neatly gnawed hole in the screen. Frantic, Sig scoured the forest nearby and the woodpiles in his yard, but there was no sign of his beloved squirrels. He was grief stricken by what he felt was the desertion of his companions. His mother sat down with him and explained that squirrels are not pets. “They are wild creatures and belong in the wilderness,” she told him. Sig still missed them, but he realized that she was right. The squirrels were better off in the wild.

  Sig spent hour
s lying on the ground, listening to the sounds of the earth. He could hear the rustling of fall leaves and pine needles, but also the chick-a-dee-dee of chickadees, the conk-la-ree! of red-winged blackbirds, the hoot of an owl, and the wild, alarming scream of an osprey hunting for its dinner. The soaring birds made Sig jealous. “I wish I could fly and play hide-and-seek with the clouds,” he thought. Frogs croaked and insects buzzed from a nearby pond. Suddenly, the honking of geese crowded out the other noises. “Where are they going and why?” he wondered as they flew by. And then he realized that he might not be the only one who was curious. “Boys all over the world could be seeing the same thing right now and wondering the same thing,” he thought.

  The little pond was also home to ducks, minks, and weasels. A muskrat house, built out of sticks, sat just above the water to keep the nest dry. Sig marveled at the animals and the green scum that produced bubbles on the pond’s surface. As he watched all these forms of life interacting and coexisting, the realization hit Sig that all life is connected.

  At the local library, Sig read about famous painters and admired their art. One day he bought some tubes of paint, a paintbrush, a palette, and a canvas. He grasped the brush, dipped it in the paint, and applied the colors to create the masterpiece he saw in his mind, but it looked nothing like he had

  Sigurd’s family home in Ashland, on the corner of Second

  Avenue and Sixth Street

  envisioned. The images were crude and unrecognizable. How frustrating! He kept trying, but the painting only looked worse. No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to express what he was feeling. Then he thought perhaps he could paint pictures with words instead.