Summer 1945, ca

Sigurd spent a year in Europe beginning in June 1945. As soon as it was clear that Germany was about to surrender, the army began making plans to bring home three million Americans. Realizing that it would take months to get them all back, the army planned a variety of activities—including college course work—to keep the soldiers reasonably content and active while they waited. Sigurd was invited to be one of the professors at at the army's university in Shrivenham, England, far to the west of London near Swindon.

Classes didn't start until August 1, so Sigurd got to travel around England and Scotland during the summer. In mid-July he even got to spend the night of a full moon in the midst of the circle of stones at Stonehenge. Sigurd wrote the following after a pleasant encounter with an elderly Scottish gentelman near Edinboro. (The breaks in these passages are Olson's, a common practice of his when jotting down ideas in a journal.)

Day in the Peatlands

I had just passed the west end of the reservoir when I saw him, an old man striding along ahead of me. He wore a gray raincoat and had a little knapsack on his back and in his hand he held a book that he'd been reading.

When he saw me he stopped and waited, and we talked about the fishing in the stream and he told me about the little trout that grow there, how a man must be good with a fly to take them, and how in Scotland there are no private waters such as there are in England.

The little stream trickled down through the valley. Ahead were the high hills of Caernathy Peak and to the north of those — suddenly the whole world was shut out and we two were walking along that beautiful valley and talking about things that mattered —

"What the world needs is less speed—men want to get rich in a hurry"

People need the understanding of spiritual things.

He read me some poems of Rupert Brooks as we sat high on the side of Caernathy. The sun was setting in the west and the hills to the east were bathed in its last light. The heather was purple, the peaks clouded with mist.

"What the people need is happiness," he said, "and so few know how to get it. Still it lies all about them."

Then I told him of the rich man who did not know what to do with his money.

But mostly we just sat there and looked and listened and wondered how there could be thoughts of war when such a place existed. We were in a world of our own, talked of Thoreau "I would rather see a hawk over the fields of Concord" etc.

We talked of Buddha, and Confucious and the spiritual problems of mankind.

That afternoon was a revelation, a spiritual revelation. When it grew dusk we went down the side of the mountain and took the road back to Edinboro.