To Bob and Vonnie Olson, January 16, 1954; also, comments on essays

Sigurd began working on the book that became The Singing Wilderness in 1953, writing new essays and reworking others that he had written as far back as the 1930s. He didn't tell anyone about it until January 16, 1954, when he wrote about it to his son Bob and daughter-in-law Yvonne. Vonnie, as she was called, was a strong source of encouragement for Sigurd to try writing a book. Around early February she offered a critique of some of his essays. Excerpts from Sigurd's letter to Bob and Vonnie appear below, followed by Sig's own notes recalling Vonnie's comments on his essays. To see these documents in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

We are in receipt of your valued missile of current date and are taking this opportunity to return same. Soooo we are the rascals who don't love their families, we are the ones who can't take a stolen minute to keep our flesh and blood informed of our whereabouts, so we are the bbbbb what was I going to say except that we still love you and are sorry.

But it isn't true, we have written you every day almost and the post office is threatening to become 1st class if we don't stop, or do we just dream about you and do nothing. Could that be. We have your letter of the 14th Vonnie Mia Adorable Darhling and I shall answer your questions while it is still before me trembling and warm and only two days from Frisco.

1. I am glad that our life up here sounds boring and that you want to be where there is LIFE, LIFE, LIFE IN BIG CITIES and such places. That settles that little dream of quiet and peace and music and simple living. I always did think it was sort of far fetched with dreams of cabins way back in the woods where all was quiet and you could hear chickadees and the trees creack with the temperature down to 40 below and there were strange animals with kegs around their necks. Well that's good, no more worry about that. It's finished, zero.

2. Yes I am working on a book and it will be finished sometime in 1954 and I AM NOT COPYING STUFF OUT OF A OTHER BOOK SEE. I am writing one of my own and next summer if you are here I want you to help me make clean a perfect copy of the rough MSS so that we can submit it somewhere in the fall. It is a compilation of essays I have written and now in the light of my mature knowledge (I hope) rather drastically rewritten. I have written some new ones and made a lot of additions to the old ones. I may call it Wilderness Music or possible No Greener Pastures (from Thoreau). I have been working on it steadily since I got home and have some 20 chapters taking shape. How I would love to crawl into some out of the way place with a few months with nothing to do but work on it. That would really be fun. But is it a date that you will help me Vonnie when you get home....

VMD Comments on Pipes of Pan

Silence is such a beautiful thing. Really I think it is the loveliest you have done. And as far as I'm concerned it is about done. I think much more work would spoil it. What a beautiful mood you caught. Those first two paragraphs are incomparable.

Belonging will take more work, the idea I love but it must be expanded and will take more thinking. You are saying the same thing over and over again. But it won't be hard to do for you have the basic idea. It will be just a matter of working it over.

Check line in Northern Lights "I have skied along the rim of the world and have seen such things as the dwellers in town have never dreamed about." You cannot say that. The "dwellers in town" may feel that they too can know beauty.

Also "could all but hear the crackle of the Northern Lights."

The paragraph in Silence is really lovely and I see you were in the mood. You still have not lost your touch and your feeling. I am sure you will be able to do a beautiful book.

The more I read the essays the more I like them. I mean they are one of those things that become closer and closer to you as you get to know them. As I was typing yesterday I was so happy with them. They get familiar, yet there is something in them that renews the feeling each time they are read. I love them.

I love The Canoe - that is a beautiful thing. I like the personification you use. I like to use it too.

To be brutal, I do not like Saganaga -- my notes - "confused unduly dramatic, immature." You are not and never have been I think as confused as this sounds. It doesn't sound like you and it most certainly does not match the mood of the rest.

[Sigurd reflecting:] Discuss Saganaga and Northern Lights and work on Belonging. As to Sag I wonder if she is right - immaturity, perhaps, it was written in rough long ago.

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