The Listening Point Story

Sigurd Olson's Listening Point has become as legendary as the man was himself. It stands for all he held dear, for the values he treasured, and for his belief that the wilderness had a message for all who would stop and listen. As he wrote in his book Listening Point,

From it I have seen the immensity of space and glimpsed at times the grandeur of creation. There I have sensed the span of uncounted centuries and looked down the path all life has come.

Sig also believed that everyone had a Listening Point somewhere, in a garden, in a patch of woods, by the sea or in the mountains, some place one feels in harmony with man and nature and even with one's self. And, he believed, nothing else in our lives was half so precious nor so important to the good life.

Sig looked for this place all his life and finally found it on a "glaciated spit of rock in the Quetico-Superior country" on Burntside Lake outside of Ely, Minnesota. The cabin and sauna are as indigenous as the rocks and trees themselves, part of an old Finnish homestead built with square-cut and dovetailed logs from the northern wilderness, now gray and weathered by time and the seasons. It is a place where the works of man and of nature seem to be in balance.

Above all, it is a place of quiet. This is the central idea of the Listening Point experience. Sig strongly believed that "... only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still can things be seen and heard." His plea for and celebration of silence resonates throughout his many works. It speaks to generations who are seeking ways to reduce the social decibel levels, to whom silence is not just the absence of noise but a positive value to be sought and to be preserved. Those who know Listening Point all agree on one thing, that nothing must ever impair the silence and serenity of Listening Point, no matter what.

Listening Point has become a treasure to see and to know, a place of reverence and contemplation, of pleasure and inspiration for succeeding generations as it was for Sigurd himself. For many years, Listening Point belonged to the Sigurd Olson family. Now it belongs to the nation. [See also the photo essay about Listening Point.]