“There is a sense of adventure and aliveness about the hour of dawn.
Trees are more sharply etched, horizons more distinct,
sensations more vivid than at any other time of day.”
--- Sigurd F. Olson, The Singing Wilderness (1958), page 282
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Sigurd F. Olson was born on this date in 1899 (the 19th century!) and died in 1982 -- but through his work, particularly his books, lives on and should be -- as is hereby done right here, right now -- celebrated.
Olson was an environmentalist and writer with deep ties to what is now known as the Boundary Waters wilderness area, straddling the northern Minnesota / Canada border. In his day it was known as the Quetico Superior; Olson first visited and fell love with it in his early 20s, and was an almost constant presence until, about 60 years later, he died there while snowshoeing.
Olson’s books typically contain short chapters each of which focus on some aspect of the wilderness, blending observations with personal emotion and, often enough, broader perspectives – all shaped by a most admirable sensitivity and way of thinking (see, for example, the quotation at the top of this celebration).
Every place in this world, or at least every wilderness, should have a Sigurd F. Olson, and I suppose some have (thinking for example of John Muir and the Sierra or, more recently, Edward Abbey and the Utah Canyonlands).
The Singing Wilderness (1958), Olson’s first book (he published eight others in his lifetime), is organized by a series of short chapters tied to the seasons. Each chapter is a kind of gem, and some astonish.
In particular, I will never forget the chapter on the Northern Lights, with his description of ice-skating at night on a totally snow-free clear frozen miles-long lake, the windless surface mirroring the sky’s awesome aurora such that, ultimately, he – well, here’s an excerpt:
The lights of the aurora moved and shifted over the horizon. Sometimes there were shafts of yellow tinged with green, then masses of evanescence which moved from east to west and back again. Great streamers of bluish white zigzagged like a tremendous trembling curtain from one end of the sky to the other. Streaks of yellow and orange and red shimmered along the flowing borders. Never for a moment were they still, fading until they were almost completely gone, only to dance forth again in renewed splendor with infinite combinations and startling patters of design.Me o my. Happy Birthday anniversary, Sigurd F. Olson!
The lake lay like a silver mirror before me . . . . As far as I could see, the surface was clear and shining . . . . [ . . . ] . . . there had been no wind or snow to interfere, and the ice everywhere was clear—seven miles of perfect skating, something to dream about in years to come.
Hurriedly I strapped on my skates . . . and in a moment was soaring down the path of shifting light which stretched endlessly before me. [ . . .] As I sped down the lake, I was conscious of no effort, only of the dancing lights in the sky and a sense of lightness and exaltation.
Shafts of light shot up into the heavens above me and concentrated there in a final climactic effort in which the shifting colors seemed drained from the horizons to form one gigantic rosette of flame and yellow and greenish purple. Suddenly I grew conscious of the reflections from the ice itself and that I was skating through a sea of changing color caught between the streamers above and below. At that moment was part of the aurora, part of its light and of the great curtain that trembled above me.
Those moments of experience are rare. Sometimes I have known them while swimming in the moonlight, again while paddling a canoe when there was no wind and the islands seemed inverted and floating on the surface. I caught it once when the surf was rolling on an ocean coast and I was carried on the crest of a wave that had begun a thousand miles away. Here it was once more—freedom of movement and detachment from the earth.
Down the lake I went straight into the glistening path, speeding through a maze of changing color – stroke – stroke – stroke – the ringing of steel on ice, the sharp, reverberating rumbles of expansion below. Clear ice for the first time in years, and the aurora blazing away above it.
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