July 1948 (age 49)

Sigurd spent much of the month in the Quetico-Superior wilderness with his son Bob and photographer Grant Halladay, beginning the filming for the documentary Wilderness Canoe Country, which upon its release in 1949 would play a key role in the campaign to ban airplanes from the canoe country wilderness.

It probably was just as well he was gone from home a lot. The Ely Miner had recently published a letter to the editor that was a 750-word attack on Sigurd's character, and people were avoiding him on the street. The letter, written by Leo Chosa, an Ojibway resident of Basswood Lake, accused Sigurd of "double-edged, two-faced propaganda." Using the just-passed Thye-Blatnik Act to buy resorts and turn the roadless area into "an exclusive canoe country" would kill 98 percent of Ely's tourist business, Chosa claimed, but Sigurd would profit through his canoe outfitting company. The Forest Service and "other stooges" such as Sigurd were using "political skulduggery and base trickery," claiming to remove the resorts to preserve wilderness, but actually getting them out so "the big pulpwood companies" could move in. "Surely no man could be so gullible and naive," Chosa concluded, "as to imagine that the big companies will pass up the chance to grab a million cords of pulpwood so a few farmer boys can paddle Sig's canoes in a primitive setting."

Sigurd wrote to his friend Frank Hubachek, saying that people were walking away and refusing to talk to him. "It is easy to carry on this sort of cold warfare when away from this town, but to live here and face it every minute is another matter." Hubachek sympathized, but also helped Sigurd put it into perspective. "Rember, Sig," he wrote, "the Chosa letter is a mere flea bite--the more you scratch it, the worse it will itch."

July 1963 (age 64)

Sigurd spent most of July in Alaska. The first week of July he was at Mount McKinley (Denali) National Park for the annual meeting of the Wilderness Society's Governing Council. The Council was meeting in Alaska to focus on wilderness issues in the new state and adjoining portions of Canada. On July 3 Sigurd was made Vice-President of the Wilderness Society, and by July 5 he was feeling once again the strain of being committed to too many projects that took away from his writing. He wrote on some scrap paper:

Am getting so involved in many projects, I seem to be completely engulfed with my writing behind me. The important thing now is my health, my shoulder [he injured it in March], my face [he's referring to his tic] and general attitude. If I can get out of this morass this fall feeling more serene and steady and working on the book that is all....

Yesterday's hike felt good. Would soon swing into the pattern. This noon I'll take a walk over the ridge instead of staying in for lunch just to get a final whiff of McKinley. [Later in the day, he continues:] This I did and it felt good. I lay down at the far end of the trail beyond sight and sound of camp and looked over the valley....Again for the thousandth time I sit and listen and wonder what I am doing here when I should be playing my old role entirely. Next April 4th I'll be 65 the magic year when I should resign and devote the next ten years to writing and speaking and living as I think I should live....

The feeling I am wasting my time is perhaps the toughest at affairs such as this, days of sitting, talking, rushing, travel. What gives me a sense of completion, only working thinking quietly. This is the road to contentment. You will find satisfaction only by getting back to writing.

A note of sadness at the meeting: it was clear that longtime Wilderness Society council member Olaus Murie, a much beloved figure in environmentalist circles, was in grave health and that this would be his last meeting. It would have come as a shock, however, to all attending if they knew that it also would be the last meeting for executive director Howard Zahniser, who would die of a heart attack the following May.

After the meeting was over, Sigurd and Ted Swem, who had just become a member of the Wilderness Society's Governing Council and who also was in charge of new park planning for the National Park Service, traveled to a number of places in Alaska, including the Wood River-Tikchik region (they were there during the salmon run), the Mount St. Elias area, and Skagway. Their work helped set the stage for a 1964 study (with which Sigurd also was involved) that would recommend setting aside 76 million acres in 39 areas across the state.

While Sigurd loved the wild and majestic beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, he also enjoyed historical settings, and the famous gold rush site of Skagway was a favorite of his. He and Ted Swem stayed one or two nights at the Golden North Hotel (shown at right). They walked the boardwalk and part of the trail, and Sigurd would tell Ted stories of the gold rush days, often reciting by memory the poetry of Robert Service. Sigurd lobbied hard to get the Park Service involved in protecting the area, and it is now a National Historical Park.

One of Ted Swem's favorite memories of the trip took place just before the Wilderness Society's annual meeting. (He and Sigurd had arrived in Alaska early to meet the governor and finish planning their trip.) They were staying overnight in a roadhouse at some tiny town along the Kuskokwim River. It was light most of the night. About the middle of the night Sigurd woke Ted and said, "You've just got to hear this!" Up and down the river, all the dogs in the area were howling. Sigurd and Ted got up and listened for a long time, before going back to sleep.