Review: Sigurd Olson’s Essays: The Meaning of Wilderness
by Brand Frentz
This is a collection of articles and speeches by Sig Olson. They were selected by David Backes, his authorized biographer, to focus on exactly what the title says: the meaning of wilderness. Olson is known primarily for his books, but during his long and active career of outdoor, environmental advocacy he also wrote over 100 magazine articles and gave many speeches. Backes has chosen 18 of the best, from "Reflections of a Guide," which was published in Field and Stream in June 1928 (one of Olson’s first published works) to "A Longing for Wilderness," a chapter in the National Geographic book Wilderness U.S.A., published in 1973. The reader of this book will be able to see how Olson’s ideas become clearer and his statements stronger as the years passed.
This collection of short essays is a good complement to Olson’s popular books. The books tell stories and give long, beautiful elaborations of his philosophy. The essays focus on specific points and give a clearer statement of what he means. These articles are designed to provoke thought more than to be enjoyable reading (but they are that too).
The essay "Flying In," published in Sports Afield in 1945, for example, takes up a simple question: is a day spent at a favorite BWCA campsite the same whether you paddled two days to get there or flew one hour from the Ely airport? Olson did the flight, as an experiment. It is no surprise that he found it was not the same. He caught fish, took in the scenery, but the feeling was different. In the essay Olson analyzes the difference, and finds flying in is not a wilderness experience: you are just an hour from the comforts of home and you know it, consciously and unconsciously, and the wilderness feeling is missing.
Most of the essays have a double purpose, to explain and clarify the subject and to inspire the reader to act. In "Flying In" Olson is writing out of his fear that the canoe country might be swamped by postwar fly-in traffic. He demonstrates how the fly-in customer is not getting the true experience, and moreover, that large numbers of planes could spoil the wilderness experience of others. This conservation battle was won in 1949 when President Truman banned flights over the canoe country, saying, in his inimitable style, as he signed the Executive Order: "This is a battle between the beaver and the airplane boys. Let’s give it to the beaver."
But the heart of the book, and of Olson’s philosophy, is wilderness itself, the values it offers and the need to protect it from exploitation. From the start, for example the 1932 essay "Search for the Wild," Olson identified the values of wilderness as intangible, but real. The value, he explains in one essay after another, is the good feeling you get from being out in the wilderness, on your own, living simply and deeply. He traces this back to evolutionary history, believing that what feels good is being in touch with, connected to the primitive ways that the human race lived for almost all of our time on Earth. This gives a spiritual feeling, which Olson finds to be the main value of wilderness.
Sig Olson was the son of a preacher. L. J. Olson, his father, was a Swedish immigrant and Baptist (!) with firm beliefs. Young Sigurd did not follow his father’s path, but he too was a preacher, spreading the teachings of wilderness. The essays in this book lay out the doctrine of the wilderness faith. The more lyrical books, The Singing Wilderness, The Lonely Land, and the others are his most powerful tools for spreading the faith.
* The Meaning of Wilderness, Sigurd F. Olson, edited with introduction by David Backes, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, 185 pp., $24.95 (hard cover).
