In Search of Sig Olson

By David Backes

My first contact with Sigurd Olson was in February 1977. I was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and was struggling with school and entertaining thoughts of dropping out. Rather than talk to my parents about it, I decided to write to Sig. I had read a couple of his books, and was especially inspired by his recently released Reflections from the North Country. I sensed that he was someone who might understand me, and so I wrote my letter and sent it off.

His reply came within a week. To summarize it briefly, he said stay in school. But what touched me was the fact that he replied at all, and so soon, too.

I followed his advice, continued corresponding with him once or twice a year, and, in the summer of 1979, as a new husband and an even newer college graduate, moved to Ely to be near Sig’s wilderness canoe country. My wife, Judi, found part-time work at the hospital, and I worked about 30 hours a week at the Ely Echo. It quickly became clear that our long-term financial outlook up there was bleak, but meanwhile I had rediscovered my longstanding love of writing, and Sig and his wife, Elizabeth, helped persuade me to go on to graduate school. (I sometimes wonder what Sig would have said had he known what I would end up doing!)

After Sig died I entered grad school at Madison and wrote my master’s thesis on Sig’s role in getting airplanes banned from what’s now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. And I followed that with a doctoral dissertation and book about the BWCAW, called Canoe Country: An Embattled Wilderness. Meanwhile, Judi and I continued to correspond and visit with Elizabeth, and so she got to know me well and to know my research. It took a long time for her to be ready for the idea of a biography, however--she was very protective of Sig’s image and found it hard to accept that a good biography must discuss the personal as well as the professional aspects of the subject’s life. But in the summer of 1990 Tom Klein, whose company NorthWord Press was planning to publish my first book, told me he had talked to Elizabeth and was convinced that no only was she ready for a biography of Sigurd, but that if I asked her she would give me permission to do it. So when I was in Ely a couple of weeks later, I asked her, and she said yes. I have to admit I was nervous as to whether she would put any restrictions on me, but she didn’t. She said she knew I would have to write things that would make her uncomfortable, but that I should go ahead and do it.

When you write a biography, you become so immersed in the other person’s life. During the writing phase I often dreamed about Sig. And my children--well, they’ve been hearing about him their whole lives. We had sort of a standing joke that we should set an extra place at the table for Sig. But working on the biography was a great joy for me, the most rewarding thing I have ever done.

There’s a lot of detective work in a biography--maybe even more so in Sig’s case. To put it mildly, he was not an organizer. Any librarian or secretary would have declared his writing shack a disaster area--papers pile on tables and shelves, jammed at the back of an old cabinet, stuffed in disorganized file drawers. And his collected papers at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, “organized,” so to speak, as Sig left them, are no different. It required detective work and luck, and the single best stroke of luck for me came in August 1993, as I was just about to start writing. It had been clear from Sig’s papers that he had started to keep a loose-leaf journal, or diary, in 1930, but I had not found anything dating before 1936. Elizabeth had no idea where the missing diaries might be. By August of 1993 I had decided that Sig probably had destroyed them, and that I should start writing. And then Sig’s son Bob found them, the first six years of Sig’s diaries. He found them in a cardboard box at the back of an unplugged refrigerator in the basement!

Since I have the honor of writing this first “In Search of Sig Olson” feature, I will end with this thought: One bright summer day in 1992, after a couple of years of talking to me about her husband for the biography, Elizabeth Olson confided, “You know, I never really knew Sig.” There’s a lesson in her statement for all of us. I’ve searched for Sig Olson for years, going through every nook and cranny of his life that I could find, reading every book and article he wrote, poring through his letters and journals, talking to dozens of people who knew him well. I have sometimes thought, with a certain measure of guilt, that I know him far better than I do my own deceased parents. And yet I still keep learning more, and I expect that will continue for the rest of my life.

It is impossible to learn everything about a person. (Ask yourself how many people truly know your own deepest thoughts, worries, and dreams.) And at times it is especially difficult with someone like Sigurd Olson, who became a living icon to thousands of people. It can be hard to get past the caricature. Indeed, many people don’t want to get past the caricature. It is my belief that the real Sigurd Olson--who sometimes did get angry, who sometimes did compromise on conservation issues, who sometimes did struggle deeply with himself--is far more inspiring than the mere icon. Let’s continue searching for him, and sharing what we find.