Sigurd F. Olson
Sigurd F. Olson
Sigurd Ferdinand Olson was an American writer, environmentalist, and advocate for the protection of wilderness. For more than thirty years, he served as a wilderness guide in the lakes and forests of the Quetico-Superior country of northern Minnesota and western Ontario. He was known honorifically as the Bourgeois — a term the voyageurs of old used of their trusted leaders.
"... Here were young and with an occasional and a ground cover of , , and . I listened to the violin notes of a , the flutelike call of a , the teacher-teacher of an . Following one of the logging roads almost hidden with grass and cover, I flushed a partridge with a flock of well-grown chicks. A deer had walked across the trail, and I found the pellet of a . Here was food, abundant food — berries, buds, worms, insects and mice — and this was a place for living things."
"To anyone who has spent a winter in the and known the depths to which the snow can reach, known the weeks when the stays below , the first hint of spring is a major event. You must live in the north to understand it. You cannot just come up for it as you might to Florida for the sunshine and the surf. To appreciate it, you must wait for it for a long time, hope and dream about it, and go through considerable enduring."
"Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity, an antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium."
"The Listening Point Foundation"
"s must be able to slide instantly into the water, cannot waste precious moments struggling over land. No creature is clumsier out of its element than this great diver of the north."
"A new adventure is coming up and Im sure it will be a good one."
