U.S. Senate Tribute to Sigurd Olson

U. S. Senate, August 3, 1999, Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.), Page S10134.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute one of our nation's most beloved nature writers and dedicated wilderness conservationists, Mr. Sigurd Olson. As an architect of the federal government's protection of wilderness areas, as well as a poetic voice that captured the importance of these pristine sites, Mr. Olson left us and our children a legacy of natural sanctuaries and an ethic by which to better appreciate them.

Mr. President, 1999 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sigurd Olson. Over the July recess, I had the opportunity to travel to Northern Minnesota to commemorate and celebrate Sigurd Olson's life and work. I think it is fitting that the Senate take this opportunity to honor the life of Mr. Olson, who sadly passed away 17 years ago, and to renew our dedication to continue his legacy of wilderness preservation.

Born in Chicago in 1899, Sigurd Olson and his family soon moved to the beautiful Door County Peninsula of Wisconsin. It was there that he formed his life-long attachment to nature and to outdoor recreation. Half a century later, he described what he experienced as a boy along the coast of Green Bay:

A school of perch darted in and out of the rocks. They were green and gold and black, and I was fascinated by their beauty. Seagulls wheeled and cried above me. Waves crashed against the pier. I was alone in a wild and lovely place, part of the dark forest through which I had come, and of all the wild sounds and colors and feelings of the place I had found. That day I entered into a life of indescribable beauty and delight. There I believe I heard the singing wilderness for the first time.

A few years after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Olson moved to northeastern Minnesota. He traveled and guided for many years in the surrounding millions of acres of lakeland wilderness --what eventually became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness --and he grew convinced that wilderness provided the spiritual experiences vital to modern society. It was this conviction that formed the basis of both his conservation and his writing careers. As he said at a Sierra Club conference in 1965:

I have discovered in a lifetime of traveling in primitive regions, a lifetime of seeing people living in the wilderness and using it, that there is a hard core of wilderness need in everyone, a core that makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity. There is no hiding it. . . . Unless we can preserve places where the endless spiritual needs of man can be fulfilled and nourished, we will destroy our culture and ourselves.

Olson became an active conservationist in the 1920's, fighting to keep roads, dams and airplanes out of his `special place' in northeastern Minnesota. He went on to serve as the president of both the National Parks Association and the Wilderness Society. Yet, perhaps his greatest contribution to conservation came during his tenure as an advisor to Secretary of the Interior from 1959 to the early 1970's, when he helped draft the Wilderness Act , which became law in 1964 and established the U.S. wilderness preservation system that still exists today.

While I never knew Sigurd Olson, those who worked with "Sig," as he was called, were infected by his unwavering commitment to the Boundary Waters and his desire to help people truly understand the meaning and legacy of wilderness.

Central to Olson's agenda was his perseverance as public advocate for the Boundary Waters, in spite of the sometimes quite open hostility that he faced in taking that stand. Twenty-two years ago on July 8, 1977, a public field hearing was held at Ely High School on Congressman Fraser's bill that became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978. Sigurd Olson, then 77 years old, stepped forward to testify in the midst of hisses, catcalls and boos from the roughly thousand-person crowd that packed the hearing. Despite the fact that an effigy in his likeness was hanging outside the school, he testified, saying in part:

Some places should be preserved from development and exploitation for they satisfy a human need for solace, belonging, and perspective. In the end we turn to nature in a frenzied chaotic world to find silence--oneness--wholeness--spiritual release.

I am inspired by Sigurd Olson's actions in my own work, as I have been inspired by my predecessor in the United States Senate Gaylord Nelson. I also share Olson's great respect for America's public lands and for the Boundary Waters.

Mr. President, as I mentioned, I recently visited the Boundary Waters and spent a day canoeing in the pristine area that Olson loved so dearly on the Hegman Lake chain. His words, from his first book, The Singing Wilderness , best describe the experience:

The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores. . . . There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness , and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known.

In addition to canoeing the Hegman Lakes, I also had an opportunity to visit Listening Point on Burntside Lake with Sigurd Olson's son, Bob Olson, and Bob's wife, Vonnie Olson. Many people have a special place where they go to experience nature. Perhaps it is a park, or a campsite, or a favorite hiking trail. For Sigurd Olson, it was a cabin on a tree-covered glaciated point of rock. He called it his `Listening Point,' and it is at the center of his book of the same name.

In his book, Sigurd Olson talks about that place on Burntside Lake from his first night sleeping there under the stars to the eventual building of his cabin:

From this one place I would explore the entire north and all life, including my own,' he writes. `For me, it would be a listening-post from which I might even hear the music of the spheres.

From his cabin, Olson also experienced the wonder and danger of significant storms in the Boundary Waters, an experience nearly identical to my own. Over the Fourth of July weekend this year, shortly before I arrived, serious winds hit the Boundary Waters, downing trees in a quarter of the wilderness area.

I was comforted to learn, as I arrived at Listening Point to see Bob Olson clearing trees from the driveway, that Listening Point has weathered significant storms before. Sigurd Olson writes of another storm, and its aftermath in Of Time and Place:

As we approached Listening Point we could see the damage, trees down and twisted, blocking the road to the cabin. We chopped and hacked our way through to the turnaround and found the trail to the cabin was a crisscross of broken treetops, a jackstraw puzzle of tangled debris. It was unbelievable; I looked at the trees, remembering how over the years we had treasured each one of them. . . .

Olson continues:

I sometimes wonder about the meaning of such things as this tornado--why it happened, why it leapfrogged over some areas and hit others. We paddled to the islands beyond Listening Point and saw where many trees had been blown over, all old landmarks along the shore. They would lie there for many years until they, too, would sink into the soil and disappear.

Mr. President, I have been a defender of the Boundary Waters, and my constituents adore this area. I have also joined in the fight to protect the public lands of Southern Utah, and have sponsored legislation to have the lands of wilderness potential in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore identified. All my efforts are linked to unfinished business that Sigurd Olson began in the Boundary Waters and to his commitment to designating and protecting our country's special wild places.

In addition to conveying my own admiration for Sigurd Olson, I rise today to share the reflections of my own home state. Wisconsinites have a special fondness for Sigurd Olson for several reasons. Olson, who began his environmental education as a kid from Northern Wisconsin who loved the outdoors, turned out to be a serious conservationist whose name is among the greatest conservationists of the Twentieth Century. With his special wilderness writing, Olson was a reformer who didn't come across as self-important.

Second, Wisconsinites truly appreciate an accomplished outdoor enthusiast turned advocate. That's a rarity in politics, especially these days. Olson will be long remembered for his character and fundamental decency in defense of the wilderness he loved. On behalf of myself and the citizens of my state, as well as all Americans, I wish Sigurd Olson a very happy birthday. We are a greater country for his dedication.