September 1948 (age 49)

In September 1948 the battle over airplanes in the Quetico-Superior wilderness escalated with the publication of Harold Martin's "Embattled Wilderness" in the Saturday Evening Post. Martin had taken a 10-day canoe trip through the area with Sigurd in June, and had been greatly impressed with the junior-college-dean-turned-professional conservationist. (See the June 1948 edition of "This Month in Olson History for more on their canoe trip.) In fact, Martin apparently was so disarmed by Sigurd that he ignored a cardinal rule about letting one's sources exert control over a story. Sigurd later said he wrote the first draft himself, and the final version of "Embattled Wilderness," which appeared in the Post on September 25, 1948, supports the claim. Throughout the story are phrases and sentences that strongly resemble Sigurd's writing style and vocabulary. The article says, for example, that the airplane "destroys for the man in the canoe the intangible, almost indescribable quality of the wilderness, a quality compounded of silence and solitude and a brooding sense of peace that sinks into the spirit."

Despite having spent years dreaming that one day he would be published by the Post, Sigurd could not afford to mention his partial authorship to friends for quite some time, because the article's impact depended upon the credibility of Post reporting. "Embattled Wilderness" helped set the stage for coverage of the issue in major Midwestern newspapers and in such national papers as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Charles Kelly of the President's Quetico-Superior Committee ordered eight thousand reprints, a number of which were given to key legislators and White House staff as a potent indicator of national interest.

September 1963 (age 64)

Sigurd spent September 3 to 12 at Katmai National Monument in Alaska, as part of a National Park Service team preparing a master plan for the park. Until then Katmai had been known largely because of its volcanic valley and the Brooks River fishing camp. Olson thought access to the park should be improved so that its beautiful waterways could become widely known. He did not advocate new road access, but motorboat access and prescribed seaplane landing points, done carefully to preserve the area's wilderness character. He also recommended building an interpretive center overlooking the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Upon Sigurd's return, he traveled to Minneapolis to appear on television and in bookstores: Runes of the North, his fourth book, had just been released.