David Backes, A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson

A book review of David Backes, A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)

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

Olson, as Backes tells the tale, also became an important figure in the wilderness conservation
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.

David Hackett Fischer, Champlain's Dream

A book review of David Hackett Fischer, Champlain's Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).

At once a biography of Samuel Champlain (1574-1635) and a history of the founding of colonial New France, Fischer's Champlain's Dream is also in part at least a work in Christian ethics, which points to the difference the application of Christian values can make in the real world.  Champlain's Dream is  a well written, carefully researched, and timely work devoted to an important and fascinating slice of the past, all of the things we expect of Fisher.

As Fischer portrays him, Champlain was a man who was born into violent times and was a soldier, but he became something much more than just a warrior.  He was born into a France that was rent with religious divisions between Catholics and Protestant and himself converted from Protestantism to Catholicism but learned to transcend these divisions.  He lived in a time when politics was as complicated and brutal as ever, and he played the political game when necessary but only in pursuit of his dream for a French colony in North America.  Finally, what Champlain found in the great St. Lawrence River valley was a large set of Indian tribes engaged in constant warfare with each other and weary of that warfare; and he managed to bring a certain degree of peace to the warring tribes for a period of time in pursuit of his dream of a peaceful, prosperous New France

A self-portrait of Champlain

All of this, according to Fischer, grew out of Champlain's Christian faith.  Fischer is careful to keep Champlain in his own time so that he doesn't end up being a seventeenth century version of a modern-day progressive Christian.  Champlain believed in monarchy.  He accepted a hierarchical society as perfectly natural.  He was a patriotic Frenchman.  Still, he wanted Protestants to have a place in New France along side of Catholics.  Perhaps even more remarkably Champlain respected the Indians he worked with, valued much of their cultures, and sought to live with them in a fair and peaceable union that did not lead eventually to their near extermination.  And all of this was because of the way Chaplain interpreted and applied his Christian faith.

It is clear that none of this came easily for Champlain.  He made powerful political enemies and always had to contend with conflicting financial interests that sought to exploit French North America at the expense of his vision.  In New France, he had to contend with the Iroquois, who never made peace with the French, and he was forced to attack them in order to deter their attacks on the colony and on its allied tribes.  On the home front, he had a complicated relationship with his wife, Helene, that never produced any children and ended up with her entering a convent.  At one time, New France was seized by Scottish merchants based in England and Champlain was made a prisoner until he was finally returned to France.  Through it all, however, he persevered in his pursuit of his vision of a peaceful and prosperous New France grounded on Christian principles.  He, for example, promoted exchanges of young people between the French and the Indians so that both sides gained a better appreciation for the cultures of the other.  Many of the French young men because interpreters for the French, not just of Indian languages but also of their ways of life.

In his concluding chapter, Fischer writes,

Many stories have been told about first encounters between American Indians and Europeans.  Few of them are about harmony and peace.  The more one reads of these accounts, the more one learns that something extraordinary happened in New France during the early seventeenth century—something different from what took place in new Spain, New England, and New Netherlands.  Scholars of many nations agree that the founders of New France were able to maintain good relations with American Indians more effectively than any other colonizing power. (p. 527)

Fischer credits those good relations primarily to Samuel Champlain who he characterizes as a man of deep religious faith as well as a member of a group of French humanists who originally formed around King Henri IV.  Champlain himself was close to the king.

One could well argue that New England was just as much a product of the application of Christian beliefs and values as New France, but with an outcome that was very different.  The Indians were pushed into open war, treated with disdain, and eventually the "Indian problem" was solved by their near extermination.  While Fischer points out that there were compassionate English settlers and insensitive settlers among the French, one of his key points is that the differences between the practice of Christianity in New France under Champlain and the practice of the faith in other colonies such as New England led to very different outcomes.  The outcome in New France was more Christ-like.  It was less dualistic and less brutal.  It was less ideological and less destructive.  It was more dialogical and more just and peaceable.

Fischer did not write Champlain's Dream as a work of theological reflection, but much of what he wrote provokes, almost demands that reflection.  But whether or not it is viewed theologically, Fischer's Champlain's Dream is a well-crafted historiographical work. It is a comprehensive study that includes a lengthy literature survey, a set of sixteen appendices on a range of issues and subjects related to Champlain's life and times, and an extensive bibliography.  The book is richly illustrated and contains a good set of maps.  All-in-all, this is an excellent book generally and one that is well worth consideration by students of Christian theology and ethics.