July 1953 (age 54)

This was a month of travel for Sig. As new president of the National Parks Association, he traveled with Elizabeth throughout the West to get a better understanding of national park issues. He and Elizabeth drove from Ely on July 3 for Augusta, Idaho, to attend the Wilderness Society's annual council meeting and take a short backpacking trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. [The photo was taken at the Wilderness Society meeting: from left to right are Dick Leonard, president of the Sierra Club; Olaus Murie, president of the Wilderness Society; and Sigurd.] On July 9th they were in Glacier National Park; July 11th in Yellowstone; July 12th in the Grand Tetons. Then they drove to Oregon, and on July 14th visited Crates of the Moon National Park. They spent July 15-17 at Crater Lake National Park, and the 18th and 19th at nearby national monuments. Then they headed for Washington, and on July 21st they visited Olympic National Park. On their way back to Ely they stopped for a couple of days in Missoula, Montana, to attend the annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of America.

July 1968 (age 69)

Sigurd got a contract from Viking Press to write The Hidden Forest. He also spent the last half of the month in Alaska, both as a member of the National Park Service's advisory board, which was meeting at Mt. McKinley (now called Denali) National Park, and as a consultant to the Park Service who was working on McKinley's master plan. ["It had kind of stagnated as one of the oldtime parks and they weren't doing anything very progressive towards looking at future problems, and Dad could see all kinds of people coming in," his son Sig Jr. told me in 1991.]

Earlier in the month, he attended the Izaak Walton League's annual meeting, held in Denver. His position as the league's wilderness ecologist had provided the bulk of his salary since 1948. Now, however, the league was in financial trouble, and board chairman Vernon Hagelin approached Sig and said he was concerned that the cost-conscious organization would let Sig go. Rather than put the league into that painful and embarrassing position, Sig wrote a letter of resignation and had it delivered to the board. Hagelin later wrote to Sig to tell him what happened when the board got Sig's letter:

You acted in typical Sig Olson style, no doubt with intent to save embarrassment for others. But I wish I could send you a tape of what happened when your note came before the board. Del Lorice started the reaction. She expressed dismay in strong terms at thought that the League was so impoverished that it could not afford its one true "name." Wiles said that your address before the convention was in itself worth your League salary to every person who heard it. And around the table they went, with similar remarks and not one word indicating even remote wish to consider your resignation seriously. The whole thing was the more remarkable because the whole board was in a knife honing mood.

In the end, the league asked Sig to stay on as wilderness ecologist for "at least a few more years." Sig must have agreed to at least one more year, because he finally and officially resigned on July 8, 1969.