Growing up in Minnesota, there were always books by Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982) on the bookshelf and frequently on the end table next to my Dad's chair. And our summer vacation trips were always Up North in the Boundary Waters canoe country. I took my first canoe trip when I was 15, and it has remained a high point ever since. All of which is to say that Backes biography of Olson brings back for me memories of both the man and the land he celebrated in his writings and his life. It is my privilege to again live for a time on the edge of a northern semi-wilderness, which means that Backes portrayal of Olson conjures up not just memories from the past. It also reminds me of why living in the North Country remains a privilege.
In this context, there is a great deal in A Wilderness Within that resonates with the reader. It is a generally good read. It is well-written. Backes obviously knows his material and has done his research. He adheres to the timeline of Olson's life quite closely, and he reveals something of the complexity of the man. This is not a hagiographic work of unmixed admiration, although it is clear that the author does admire and deeply respect his subject. Perhaps the one serious criticism I have of the book is that so little of Olson's actual time in the wilderness is described here. His sometimes long trips into the wilderness receive mostly only passing attention in the context of other matters and seem to be significant more for the people Olson met on them than they were in and of themselves. That being said, in general Backes provides his readers with a nuanced, clear, and interesting portrait of Sigurd Olson.
Backes does a particularly good job in describing for us the fact that from an early age Olson was on a spiritual journey, a quest for meaning. He was raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian home, which set him on a course for a search for God. At the same time, he was raised in northern Wisconsin, which gave him the wilderness context within which he conducted that sometimes agonizing search. The third leg of the tripod of Olson's life, as described by Backes, was his love of writing and the desire to use writing to communicate to others his philosophy of the wilderness as a wellspring of our spirituality. It took him decades to discover the genre appropriate to his style and sense of mission, and therein lies one key to the course of Olson's life, which was not always easy. He battled depression. He was sometimes hard to live with at home. He resented having to make a living that kept him out of the wilderness and away from his writing desk. But eventually Olson eventually became a full-fledged writer, beginning with his well-known first book, The Singing Wilderness, published in 1956. From that initial success, he became a widely read and influential voice for the wilderness, which remained the dominant motif of his life to his last day.
 |
| Olson on the trails
Source: singingwilderness.net
|
movement. He led several organizations dedicated to the preservation of the wilderness as well as serving as an advisor to governors and national political figures on conservation issues. For decades, he was in the thick of the political wrangling over the use of what remains of the wilderness in the United States. Backes points out that as much as he was admired around the country the one place where he was least popular was in his hometown of Ely, Minnesota, because he seemed intent on thwarting its economic development by keeping loggers, resort developers, and other despoilers of the wilderness out of the woods.
The main theme through all of the book, however, is Olson's spiritual quest for meaning, which he found in the experience of wilderness "epiphanies" in the rugged wilderness of the Quetico-Superior canoe country. He was an expert woodsman. He loved nothing more than being in the wild. And he developed a wilderness philosophy-theology built on his experiences in the woods, which held that the wilderness remains a presence deep within us—a "racial memory" of evolutionary proportions. It was where we became human, and it is where we lived and development for countless generations. We still need to be in the wilderness because it is there that we discover (or recover) what is good, meaningful, and important in life. In later years, Olson did a good deal of reading in philosophy, theology, as well as in the literature of conservation and developed his wilderness philosophy-theology accordingly. Backes especially highlights Olson's spiritual journey and his thoughts on the meaning of wilderness in Chapter 14, which is entitled, "From Contemplation to Action: Sigurd Olson's Wilderness Theology, 1959-1964," (pages 286-313). [See Backes, "The Land Beyond the Rim: Sigurd Olson's Wilderness Theology," for a further description of Olson's wilderness spirituality]. It should be said that Olson's theology was not an orthodox, trinitarian Christian one although it is clear that it has its roots in Christian thinking about the divine. He belonged to the Presbyterian Church in Ely, but Backes leaves the impression that organized religion was not particularly important to him.
Acknowledging that Olson became an icon of the conservation movement, Backes strives for a balanced and critical account of his life and largely succeeds. Olson was not a happy man for most of his life. His dream of becoming a writer was as much a source of suffering over the course of the years as it was happiness. He seems to have enjoyed praise and attention a little too obviously, and there were long periods when he was inattentive and even insensitive to his family. In the end, however, Backes leaves his readers with the impression that these admitted defects only serve to underscore the greatness of the man. He overcame many obstacles, internal as well as external, in the course of his life and made an important difference in his time. Olson was something of a people's philosopher-theologian, as comfortable with a rod, a paddle, or even a gun in his hand as a pen and as happy sitting in a duck blind as over a typewriter. He could be bold and tough, but as a college dean he devoted himself to his students who loved him. So, what comes through by the end of the book is that Sigurd Olson did become a beloved, deeply respected, iconic figure by the time of his death. He was a leader, whether on the water or in a boardroom—and people followed.
Backes' The Wilderness Within is straight-forward and without frills. In that sense, it reflects in its style something of the man it describes. For those interested in the wilderness, spirituality and theology, the history of the conservation movement, or who simply enjoy a good biography, this is a book well worth reading. I highly recommend it.
