It is the life and times of environmental wilderness writer and advocate Sigurd F. Olson this week on the show. We hope to do his incredible work justice throughout this series.
Source material: A Wilderness Within-The Life of Sigurd F. Olson by David Backes
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Episode Transcript
[0:00:17 – 0:00:23] Adam: Welcome to Tumble Home, a Boundary Waters podcast, episode 085.
[0:00:26 – 0:00:30] Adam: My name is Adam and joining me here in Studio K is my good friend Eric.
[0:00:30 – 0:00:31] Adam: Hello, Eric.
[0:00:31 – 0:00:31] Erik: Hi.
[0:00:33 – 0:00:34] Erik: Tumble Home.
[0:00:34 – 0:00:36] Erik: You had to ask me how to start the show.
[0:00:36 – 0:00:36] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:00:36 – 0:00:41] Adam: Yeah, I was blanking on like how to start the show, like a proper show about the Boundary Waters again.
[0:00:41 – 0:00:42] Adam: Yeah.
[0:00:42 – 0:00:44] Adam: We are going to talk about more Boundary Waters things this week.
[0:00:45 – 0:00:45] Adam: Go with your gut.
[0:00:47 – 0:00:52] Adam: Episode 085 of Tumble Home is sponsored by our good friends on Patreon.
[0:00:53 – 0:00:54] Adam: How’s it going, folks?
[0:00:54 – 0:00:55] Erik: How are you doing?
[0:00:55 – 0:00:56] Adam: How’s she going by?
[0:00:56 – 0:00:58] Erik: Thank you so much.
[0:01:00 – 0:01:01] Adam: Your support makes this show possible.
[0:01:02 – 0:01:06] Adam: And this week we are also sponsored by our good friend Hopalicious, the generous.
[0:01:08 – 0:01:09] Adam: giver of art supplies.
[0:01:09 – 0:01:10] Erik: Uh-huh.
[0:01:10 – 0:01:11] Adam: Hopalicious.
[0:01:12 – 0:01:19] Adam: This one, and at least part one, part two, who knows how many parts this one is going to be.
[0:01:19 – 0:01:21] Adam: They’re all sponsored by Hopalicious.
[0:01:22 – 0:01:24] Erik: Well, considering he sent us 16 beers…
[0:01:25 – 0:01:45] Erik: uh in a box that was actually like almost coming open when i received it from the uh fill in the blank delivery service i don’t want to get anybody in trouble too much here um but uh yeah they were just like all like loosely filled it was like uh and there’s loose pizza biters in there too
[0:01:45 – 0:01:58] Erik: Yeah, he padded out the box of beers with a full, well, I think it’s like a medium-sized bag of pizza biters, which is first time ever seeing a pepperoni and bacon flavor.
[0:01:59 – 0:02:04] Erik: But then there was also like a loose like mini bag for like people on the go or something, I guess.
[0:02:04 – 0:02:05] Erik: A lunch snacker.
[0:02:05 – 0:02:13] Erik: Yeah, the lunch snacker had been completely destroyed with loose, like it was like you could see like grease marks on the cardboard from the outside.
[0:02:13 – 0:02:14] Erik: It was probably Todd the Axeman.
[0:02:15 – 0:02:16] Adam: That’s who destroyed the pizza biters.
[0:02:16 – 0:02:18] Erik: Which is what we happen to be drinking right now.
[0:02:18 – 0:02:21] Erik: We’ve got some from Surly.
[0:02:22 – 0:02:32] Erik: I think there was a person a while back who was commenting on how we have been sponsored by four Surlys but never Todd the Axeman.
[0:02:32 – 0:02:32] Erik: Here it is.
[0:02:33 – 0:02:39] Erik: Todd the Axeman IPA from Surly is sponsoring this episode.
[0:02:39 – 0:02:40] Erik: Finally happened.
[0:02:40 – 0:02:41] Erik: That makes five.
[0:02:44 – 0:02:44] Adam: Cheers.
[0:02:45 – 0:02:46] Erik: Yeah, they’re already open.
[0:02:46 – 0:02:49] Adam: Well, I’m… Yeah, no, we still got an open one.
[0:02:49 – 0:02:50] Erik: You got to get the sound.
[0:02:50 – 0:02:51] Erik: Here you go.
[0:02:52 – 0:02:53] Erik: All right, nice.
[0:02:55 – 0:02:57] Erik: So, yeah, that makes five surly sponsors.
[0:02:58 – 0:03:00] Erik: And a number of other delicious beers.
[0:03:00 – 0:03:08] Erik: We have had the Axeman in the past, but a bunch of other ones in the fridge that never actually tasted.
[0:03:09 – 0:03:10] Erik: Looking forward to that.
[0:03:10 – 0:03:12] Erik: Thank you, Hopalicious.
[0:03:15 – 0:03:15] Erik: So.
[0:03:17 – 0:03:18] Erik: You’ve seen the episode title.
[0:03:18 – 0:03:24] Erik: You’ve seen some posts on the social meds, as they say.
[0:03:24 – 0:03:28] Erik: You probably know what the topic of this episode is about.
[0:03:28 – 0:03:31] Erik: It’s about a man.
[0:03:33 – 0:03:36] Erik: I’m probably more nervous about this one than any other book report I’ve done.
[0:03:36 – 0:03:37] Erik: Oh, boy.
[0:03:38 – 0:03:38] Erik: I’m nervous.
[0:03:39 – 0:03:39] Erik: I’m nervous for you.
[0:03:40 – 0:03:41] Erik: I need to do justice.
[0:03:42 – 0:03:44] Erik: I need to do him justice, his name justice.
[0:03:45 – 0:03:47] Erik: I feel like there’s very little I actually could do.
[0:03:47 – 0:03:49] Erik: Maybe that’s what I need to tell myself.
[0:03:49 – 0:03:51] Erik: There is very little I could do to take away from his legacy.
[0:03:52 – 0:03:54] Adam: It’s a good story, I’ve been told.
[0:03:54 – 0:04:03] Erik: So, yeah, before we get into the life and times of the man, the myth, and the legend that is Sigurd F. Olsen…
[0:04:06 – 0:04:14] Erik: Let me just ask you what your experience is with that name and any of his works and what he is known for.
[0:04:14 – 0:04:16] Erik: And I don’t feel like you need to…
[0:04:17 – 0:04:25] Erik: I mean, you’re a little bit distant out of the realm for that, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with whatever answer you may have.
[0:04:26 – 0:04:35] Adam: Yeah, I don’t know a whole lot about his professional career, but just open horizons comes to mind when you say Sigurd.
[0:04:35 – 0:04:36] Adam: Sigurd?
[0:04:36 – 0:04:37] Erik: Sigurd.
[0:04:38 – 0:04:40] Adam: I always wished it had been pronounced Sigurd.
[0:04:41 – 0:04:44] Erik: I don’t know, but then like Sig wouldn’t work, which is a great shortening.
[0:04:46 – 0:04:51] Adam: Yeah, more of like a literary master of nature writing.
[0:04:52 – 0:04:53] Adam: That’s what I picture.
[0:04:53 – 0:05:00] Adam: But I think there’s a lot more than that, like in his professional career beforehand, before he started writing those books.
[0:05:01 – 0:05:09] Erik: Yeah, I think that’s probably what he is most known for is the writing, the nature writing, as it were.
[0:05:09 – 0:05:11] Erik: And that was my first experience with him.
[0:05:11 – 0:05:13] Adam: He’s like the Steinbeck of nature writing.
[0:05:13 – 0:05:14] Adam: Wow.
[0:05:14 – 0:05:17] Adam: Simple sentences, like perfectly…
[0:05:19 – 0:05:25] Adam: Perfectly crafted paragraphs and sentence structure, but simple.
[0:05:25 – 0:05:28] Adam: None of this fancy mumbo.
[0:05:28 – 0:05:30] Adam: It writes beautifully with simple language.
[0:05:32 – 0:05:38] Adam: That’s what I think of when you mentioned you were going to be doing a bunch of reading on them.
[0:05:38 – 0:05:48] Adam: And so then when I knew you’ve been working on this project, so I’ve deliberately been avoiding any Sigurd Olsson for the previous six months now.
[0:05:48 – 0:05:57] Erik: Yeah, and after reading, so we are using a biography as our source material.
[0:05:57 – 0:06:05] Erik: And as with previous book reports, these are my own words interpreted from reading the book.
[0:06:05 – 0:06:10] Erik: with many direct quotes pulled from it.
[0:06:10 – 0:06:16] Erik: And if I am ever directly quoting the author of this biography, I will let you know.
[0:06:17 – 0:06:23] Erik: And that book is A Wilderness Within, The Life of Sigurd F. Olsen by David Backus.
[0:06:25 – 0:06:26] Erik: Highly recommended.
[0:06:26 – 0:06:31] Erik: I do not feel like, again, that this replaces actually reading the book.
[0:06:32 – 0:06:39] Erik: There’s going to be many points in this story where I feel like David does an
[0:06:40 – 0:06:41] Erik: Excellent job of…
[0:06:42 – 0:06:43] Erik: He’s a great writer, actually.
[0:06:43 – 0:06:53] Erik: Out of all the book reports we’ve done, I feel like he’s probably actually just in terms of language, one of the best writers that I’ve come across.
[0:06:54 – 0:07:01] Erik: Usually biographies can get really bogged down and just like hammering out details, but he does a great job of actually painting a…
[0:07:03 – 0:07:11] Erik: balanced picture, you know, and we’ll get into what that necessarily means in terms of what the myth is and what Sigurd is actually all about.
[0:07:12 – 0:07:15] Erik: But I can’t recommend the biography enough.
[0:07:15 – 0:07:22] Erik: And I also, along with that, I’m not going to go down too many of the actual books that Sigurd wrote.
[0:07:24 – 0:07:25] Erik: in this story.
[0:07:26 – 0:07:36] Erik: The story of Sigurd F. Olsen and his life cannot be told without telling the story of the Boundary Waters, and that is mostly what this is going to be about.
[0:07:37 – 0:07:49] Erik: So if you’re interested in nature writing, the comparisons with like Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau, and how those interact, and what his inspirations were as a writer…
[0:07:49 – 0:07:53] Erik: Um, that is what you will get out of reading this biography.
[0:07:54 – 0:08:12] Erik: Um, I’m mostly going with, uh, chronological events, uh, fun tidbits that got him to the point of becoming a writer at the point that he did and his involvement with creating, um, the Bongewaters as we know it today.
[0:08:14 – 0:08:18] Erik: So again, this is not a, this isn’t a replacement for reading the book.
[0:08:18 – 0:08:25] Erik: Great comparisons and a lot of deep thoughts on theology and environmentalism in general.
[0:08:25 – 0:08:30] Adam: I really don’t know enough about his involvement in the creation of the Boundary Waters.
[0:08:31 – 0:08:33] Adam: So I’m very excited to learn more about that.
[0:08:35 – 0:08:40] Adam: Got a big void there where I just, I have some knowledge, but not nearly enough.
[0:08:41 – 0:09:04] Erik: Yeah, and just so for myself personally, my first experience with him was the iconic like golden yellow book with the Francis Lee Jacques like black and white artwork on the cover that I would always see at Paragus Outfitters whenever I would come up as a youth fan.
[0:09:05 – 0:09:09] Erik: and they just jumped off the shelf because of the imagery.
[0:09:10 – 0:09:31] Erik: And I remember reading like almost all of them on those trips, mostly just cabin camping, um, going out for fishing trips during the day and then really getting into it when I started doing the like friends trips where we were actually out in the boundary waters and camping and bringing those with as reading material.
[0:09:32 – 0:09:32] Erik: Um,
[0:09:32 – 0:09:37] Erik: which I feel like after reading this biography, I want to maybe try to get back into.
[0:09:38 – 0:09:45] Erik: So yeah, if you are unfamiliar, there’s a number of ways to get a brief overview on everything.
[0:09:46 – 0:09:48] Erik: This is going to be more detailed based.
[0:09:48 – 0:09:58] Erik: So if you’re unfamiliar with Sigurd F. Olsen and you’re listening to this podcast, you’re going to learn a lot, but you might want to bring some
[0:09:58 – 0:10:13] Erik: remedial knowledge to the table before we delve I didn’t so much as look at his Wikipedia page before we started recording nice well I’m so so you’re along for the ride with everybody else which is the way we like to do it you did it to me with the beavers
[0:10:16 – 0:10:19] Erik: Christiane Birkeland, about a year ago, almost, we did this.
[0:10:19 – 0:10:21] Adam: That’s the formula, yeah.
[0:10:21 – 0:10:30] Adam: One of us is the reader and book reporter, has a notebook full of materials in front of them, and then the other just is sitting here with a beer.
[0:10:30 – 0:10:31] Adam: I have a blank page.
[0:10:31 – 0:10:34] Adam: I’ve written in the name of the book and the author so far.
[0:10:34 – 0:10:38] Adam: What year did this A Wilderness Within come out?
[0:10:39 – 0:10:43] Erik: This book was published in, I think it was like the late 90s?
[0:10:44 – 0:10:46] Erik: I’m not familiar with David Backus at all.
[0:10:47 – 0:10:50] Erik: 97 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota.
[0:10:52 – 0:10:59] Erik: Yeah, we’re not the first ones to come up with this concept of book reports, so we don’t claim any kind of ownership over this style.
[0:11:00 – 0:11:05] Adam: Just doing book reports about things that should be interesting for people that like the Boundary Waters.
[0:11:05 – 0:11:06] Erik: Exactly.
[0:11:06 – 0:11:08] Erik: Without further ado.
[0:11:09 – 0:11:10] Erik: Delay.
[0:11:10 – 0:11:11] Erik: Are you ready?
[0:11:12 – 0:11:12] Erik: I’m ready.
[0:11:12 – 0:11:13] Erik: Let’s see if we can do this.
[0:11:13 – 0:11:19] Erik: I’m in an interesting position here with the new setup since the last time I’ve had to do this.
[0:11:19 – 0:11:24] Erik: There’s going to be a lot of reading out of my college composition notebook.
[0:11:27 – 0:11:37] Erik: During the 1880s, nearly 350,000 Swedes, which is roughly 7% of that population, emigrated to the United States.
[0:11:38 – 0:11:45] Erik: They were lured by aggressive advertising in local papers, especially from Midwestern states.
[0:11:46 – 0:11:49] Erik: One of these Swedes, Lawrence J. Olson, said,
[0:11:50 – 0:11:55] Erik: set sail for opportunity in April 1888 at the age of 19.
[0:11:56 – 0:12:09] Erik: His urge to preach was strong and graduated from seminary school in 1892 from Chicago’s Morgan Park Seminary and took his first assignment at the Swedish Baptist Church of St.
[0:12:09 – 0:12:10] Erik: Cloud.
[0:12:10 – 0:12:13] Erik: While acting as a visiting minister from St.
[0:12:13 – 0:12:18] Erik: Cloud, the man known to his mostly Swedish parishioners as Elje was
[0:12:20 – 0:12:24] Erik: Lawrence J., just the Swedish pronunciation, turned into Elie.
[0:12:25 – 0:12:26] Adam: That sounds pretty cool.
[0:12:27 – 0:12:27] Erik: Yeah.
[0:12:28 – 0:12:30] Erik: Sounds Amish.
[0:12:30 – 0:12:37] Erik: Met Ida Mae Cederholm in Brainerd in February 1894 and were married by July of the same year.
[0:12:38 – 0:12:38] Erik: Cederholm?
[0:12:38 – 0:12:39] Erik: Cederholm.
[0:12:40 – 0:12:43] Erik: H-O-L-M. Classic name.
[0:12:43 – 0:12:45] Erik: Ida Mae and Elie Cederholm.
[0:12:46 – 0:12:59] Erik: were in Chicago, and four years later, he was at, sorry, four years later, Elie and Ida Mae were in Chicago at Swedish Baptist in Humboldt Park, she pregnant with their second child.
[0:13:00 – 0:13:05] Erik: On April 4th, 1899, Sigurd Ferdinand Olsen was born.
[0:13:06 – 0:13:10] Erik: His middle name, which he would always detest, belonged to a family friend.
[0:13:11 – 0:13:14] Erik: Sigurd would have little memory of Chicago because at the age of seven,
[0:13:15 – 0:13:19] Erik: His father was reassigned to Sister Bay in Door County, Wisconsin.
[0:13:20 – 0:13:26] Erik: The family’s two-story home was a half-mile east of town, surrounded by farm fields, woods, and swampland.
[0:13:28 – 0:13:33] Erik: When he was nine, he pressed out further into nearby woods until he came to a lake.
[0:13:34 – 0:13:38] Erik: Fifty years later, he described his experience at the end of an abandoned pier.
[0:13:40 – 0:13:42] Erik: A school of perch darted in and out of the rocks.
[0:13:43 – 0:13:47] Erik: They were green and gold and black, and I was fascinated by their beauty.
[0:13:48 – 0:13:50] Erik: Seagulls wheeled and cried above me.
[0:13:50 – 0:13:52] Erik: Waves crashed against the pier.
[0:13:53 – 0:13:58] Erik: I was alone in a wild and lovely place, part of the dark forest through which I had come.
[0:13:59 – 0:14:03] Erik: and of all the wild sounds and colors and feelings of the place I had found.
[0:14:04 – 0:14:08] Erik: That day I entered into a life of indescribable beauty and delight.
[0:14:09 – 0:14:12] Erik: There, I believe, I heard the singing wilderness for the first time.
[0:14:16 – 0:14:40] Adam: um so that’s where that comes from yeah a little bit i kind of like the perch i didn’t know sister sister bay was going to get in on this story yeah i didn’t realize he was up in dark county sister bay is that on the west side east side of the peninsula i’m not sure i’m not 100 familiar i think it’s on the west side on the bay side but i’m not honestly there’s quite a few bays up there and i kind of avoided dark county to be honest yeah
[0:14:44 – 0:14:46] Erik: Fudge Santa Village, as it were.
[0:14:46 – 0:14:47] Adam: I’ll try and fact check that on the fly.
[0:14:47 – 0:14:48] Adam: You keep going.
[0:14:48 – 0:14:49] Adam: Okay.
[0:14:49 – 0:14:50] Erik: At this point in his childhood…
[0:14:51 – 0:14:55] Erik: He had a clear intuition and desire to feel connected with nature.
[0:14:56 – 0:15:02] Erik: This desire to assert individuality and value can be contributed in part to his first two school teachers.
[0:15:03 – 0:15:17] Erik: Mrs. Tubbs, his kindergarten teacher, was literally beating a child with a ruler on the first day of class, and when she saw the Olsens standing in the doorway, threw down the boy, turned, pointed, and shouted, “‘If you don’t behave, you’ll be next!’
[0:15:18 – 0:15:20] Erik: That’s his first day in school.
[0:15:20 – 0:15:21] Erik: It’s a good memory.
[0:15:21 – 0:15:21] Erik: Yeah.
[0:15:23 – 0:15:25] Erik: His one-room schoolhouse in Sister Bay.
[0:15:27 – 0:15:29] Erik: was also run by the autocratic Mr. Yates.
[0:15:30 – 0:15:37] Erik: And he was barely, he was hardly any better, and Sigurd often found himself in the corner with the dunce cap on.
[0:15:38 – 0:15:38] Erik: Aw.
[0:15:38 – 0:15:42] Erik: Was there ever a point in, like, it seems like… Why did we get rid of the dunce cap?
[0:15:42 – 0:15:44] Erik: You think we should return the dunce cap?
[0:15:44 – 0:15:45] Erik: Yeah.
[0:15:45 – 0:15:46] Adam: Bring back the dunce cap.
[0:15:46 – 0:15:47] Adam: It’s not that bad.
[0:15:48 – 0:15:48] Adam: It’s embarrassing.
[0:15:49 – 0:15:49] Erik: Eh.
[0:15:50 – 0:15:51] Erik: It’s embarrassing, yeah, I guess.
[0:15:51 – 0:15:53] Adam: But if they’re giving it out for the wrong reasons, no good.
[0:15:53 – 0:15:55] Erik: I guess it depends on who’s getting it and why, yeah.
[0:15:56 – 0:15:57] Adam: Cigarette F is getting it.
[0:15:57 – 0:15:58] Adam: That’s not fair.
[0:15:59 – 0:16:02] Erik: Life at home proved relatively bleak as well.
[0:16:03 – 0:16:07] Erik: While not abusive in any way, his father was rigid, formal, and repressive.
[0:16:08 – 0:16:08] Erik: One time…
[0:16:09 – 0:16:09] Erik: The minister.
[0:16:10 – 0:16:19] Erik: Yes, his minister father was very, very formal, very religious, didn’t see much fun in anything, was like against singing.
[0:16:20 – 0:16:28] Erik: And the best story that kind of exemplifies this is one time Sigurd and his brother Kenneth saved and purchased a chess set
[0:16:29 – 0:16:31] Erik: And when Elie discovered it, threw it in the fire.
[0:16:32 – 0:16:32] Erik: What?
[0:16:32 – 0:16:33] Erik: What a jerk.
[0:16:34 – 0:16:38] Erik: Just a bunch of clattering pieces of wood thrown in the fireplace.
[0:16:38 – 0:16:40] Adam: I will destroy the devil’s game.
[0:16:40 – 0:16:40] Erik: Yep.
[0:16:41 – 0:16:42] Erik: Chess, the devil’s game.
[0:16:43 – 0:16:47] Erik: His mother, Ida Mae, on the other hand, was almost… Cedar home.
[0:16:47 – 0:17:16] Erik: item a well she’s not item a olsen but yes cedar home um was on the other hand almost too protective and this created a tough parental dichotomy that led to him continually escaping the house to explore the natural side of door county sister bay on the west side of door county on the bay fact check that yeah i did it’s up there on the northern western section of door county not quite to washington island but almost there all right door county beautiful have been checked
[0:17:17 – 0:17:29] Erik: As his father took on more oversight in the Wisconsin Baptist State Convention, the family was on the move to Prentiss and then to Ashland, Wisconsin, three years after that.
[0:17:30 – 0:17:37] Erik: By the time the Olsons arrived in these parts, 90% of the Great Pine slash Hemlock forests had been logged.
[0:17:39 – 0:17:51] Erik: During his self-proclaimed Daniel Boone days, Sigurd took to fishing almost every day and learned to hunt deer from a local man named Heine or Old John.
[0:17:51 – 0:17:52] Erik: I prefer Heine.
[0:17:52 – 0:17:53] Erik: Heine?
[0:17:53 – 0:17:53] Erik: Okay.
[0:17:54 – 0:17:57] Erik: Well, he will never come up again, so we’re just going to go ahead and call him Heine.
[0:17:58 – 0:17:59] Erik: But he didn’t learn it from his father or his mother.
[0:17:59 – 0:18:01] Erik: He learned hunting from a local person.
[0:18:02 – 0:18:03] Adam: A woodsman.
[0:18:03 – 0:18:04] Erik: Yeah.
[0:18:04 – 0:18:09] Erik: He became so obsessed with hunting snowshoe rabbits in Ashland, he earned the nickname Bunny.
[0:18:10 – 0:18:14] Adam: Well, I’m going to cross off hiney.
[0:18:14 – 0:18:15] Adam: I’m just going to write Bunny here.
[0:18:16 – 0:18:26] Erik: Quote, when I touched those wild furs he wrote years later, I somehow made contact with a life that had nothing to do with home or school or parents.
[0:18:27 – 0:18:32] Erik: I was in a world of my own, a free and beautiful world where all was fantasy and adventure.
[0:18:34 – 0:18:45] Erik: There’s a little record of his time at Ashland High School, but he did win a $5 gold piece for best essay on the topic of, quote, the function of the Chamber of Commerce at age 13.
[0:18:47 – 0:18:48] SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a great article.
[0:18:48 – 0:18:49] SPEAKER_00: Can we get our hands on that?
[0:18:49 – 0:18:51] Adam: Is that in the public domain?
[0:18:51 – 0:18:53] Adam: 13-year-old, maybe not.
[0:18:57 – 0:19:08] Erik: In 1916, Sigurd entered Northland College, which at the time billed itself as an Interdenominational Evangelical Protestant Academy and College.
[0:19:08 – 0:19:09] Erik: In Ashland?
[0:19:09 – 0:19:10] Erik: In Ashland, yeah.
[0:19:10 – 0:19:11] Adam: We were there, right?
[0:19:11 – 0:19:11] Adam: This is the one we were at?
[0:19:12 – 0:19:13] Adam: Yes, this is the job fair we went to.
[0:19:13 – 0:19:17] Adam: Oh my God, that was one of the greatest job fairs I’ve ever seen.
[0:19:17 – 0:19:18] Erik: I would say so.
[0:19:18 – 0:19:20] Erik: I don’t even understand what that means.
[0:19:20 – 0:19:22] Erik: Interdenominational Evangelical Protestant Academy.
[0:19:23 – 0:19:25] Adam: It sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to me, Eric.
[0:19:25 – 0:19:33] Erik: Yeah, he was one of 45 freshmen and joined the football team where he played left end in a decision that established a future pattern.
[0:19:33 – 0:19:36] Adam: What was he, like 5’3”, 100 pounds, soaking wet?
[0:19:36 – 0:19:38] Adam: He’s playing left end in the 80s?
[0:19:38 – 0:19:42] Erik: I don’t have any specific body dimensions.
[0:19:42 – 0:19:47] Erik: Oh, it was 1916, so anybody running around out there with leather…
[0:19:48 – 0:19:50] Erik: Hey, champ.
[0:19:50 – 0:19:51] Erik: Champ, get the sacks.
[0:19:52 – 0:19:52] Erik: Get the sacks.
[0:19:53 – 0:19:54] Adam: There’s no forward passing.
[0:19:54 – 0:19:57] Adam: He just looks to me like he’s a smaller dude.
[0:19:57 – 0:19:58] Adam: Yeah, we’ll get to some pictures later.
[0:19:58 – 0:20:01] Adam: He’s a wiry paddling wizard, not a left end.
[0:20:02 – 0:20:15] Erik: So he was one of 45 freshmen, and in a decision that had established a future pattern, he failed to earn a varsity letter because he skipped an important game to head to Fish Creek Slough during a November storm.
[0:20:17 – 0:20:38] Erik: skipped a game to go fishing no he he skipped a game because during these storms great flocks of migrating scalp or blue bills use the slew to take cover and he could not resist the quote wild canvas tearing sounds of the ducks pouring in he was duck watching he skipped the game to go duck watching i applaud this decision yeah
[0:20:39 – 0:20:58] Erik: So he was majoring in agriculture and one of his best friends, Andrew Urenholt, invited him out to the family farm for Easter vacation where he met Andrew’s sister, Elizabeth, and his father, Sorin, who was impressed and offered Olson a summer job to work the family land for three months.
[0:20:59 – 0:21:10] Erik: The relationship between Soren and Sigurd was one filled with long talks about things of actual consequence, as opposed to basically lectures that he received from his family.
[0:21:12 – 0:21:31] Erik: It was on one of their walks that Sigurd learned his first lesson in conservation as he looked over the Namakagan River and Soren pointed out intentionally not selling out to timber buyers, which mitigated erosion, leaving more moisture in the soil and increasing potato yields.
[0:21:32 – 0:21:47] Erik: Sigurd later said of Sorin, he was an artist who painted with grander media than most, with fields and banks of trees, with rivers and creeks, skylines, silhouettes and traceries of branches against the horizon.
[0:21:49 – 0:21:57] Erik: On top of the father-like and mentoring figure he found in Soren, Sigurd also found Elizabeth, and they began spending time together.
[0:21:58 – 0:22:09] Erik: On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Service Act, mandating men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for potential service in the military.
[0:22:11 – 0:22:13] Adam: I had completely forgotten about the Great War.
[0:22:13 – 0:22:15] Erik: Yeah, that’s…
[0:22:15 – 0:22:15] Erik: Damn it.
[0:22:15 – 0:22:17] Erik: A couple of wars come up in this story.
[0:22:17 – 0:22:18] Adam: They don’t send money to the front, do they?
[0:22:19 – 0:22:24] Erik: Well, Stigard was 18, so he’s too young to enlist, and this killed him, which is crazy.
[0:22:24 – 0:22:25] Erik: I just don’t get…
[0:22:25 – 0:22:27] Erik: I mean, this is back when it was like…
[0:22:28 – 0:22:32] Adam: hurrah, pump the fists, let’s go off and fight in the Great War with all the boys.
[0:22:33 – 0:22:35] Erik: And now it’s like, oh, God, no.
[0:22:35 – 0:22:36] Erik: I couldn’t imagine.
[0:22:37 – 0:22:45] Erik: So as he watched his brothers and friends, including Andrew Urenholt, head off to the big fight, he couldn’t stand not being able to enlist.
[0:22:46 – 0:22:49] Erik: His mother actually had to fake a heart attack to keep him from leaving.
[0:22:50 – 0:22:53] Erik: Sigurd never quite forgave her for the manipulation.
[0:22:53 – 0:22:54] Erik: He found out.
[0:22:55 – 0:22:56] Erik: I think he must have found out.
[0:22:56 – 0:22:56] Erik: Yeah.
[0:22:57 – 0:23:03] Adam: I think after he was like, oh, I’m fine again now forever.
[0:23:03 – 0:23:07] Erik: So in 1918, Olsen got a job at the Barksdale Works Company.
[0:23:08 – 0:23:14] Erik: It was the world’s largest producer of TNT, which was very dangerous work.
[0:23:14 – 0:23:15] Erik: Where was this?
[0:23:16 – 0:23:17] Erik: It’s probably in the Ashland area.
[0:23:17 – 0:23:18] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:23:18 – 0:23:20] Adam: I didn’t know there’s a TNT industry up there.
[0:23:21 – 0:23:21] Erik: Yeah.
[0:23:22 – 0:23:24] Erik: So he worked the night shift.
[0:23:24 – 0:23:28] Erik: So he missed out on the daytime explosion that killed five men.
[0:23:29 – 0:23:39] Erik: One night he was approaching a fortifying plant and it exploded as he approached, leaving the man walking in next to him naked as all of his clothes were burned off in the heat.
[0:23:40 – 0:23:41] Adam: All right.
[0:23:41 – 0:23:42] Adam: See you tomorrow, Bill.
[0:23:43 – 0:23:44] SPEAKER_00: I’m going to head in.
[0:23:44 – 0:23:45] Erik: I’m going to head out.
[0:23:46 – 0:23:47] Adam: I’m going to punch out for the day.
[0:23:48 – 0:23:54] Erik: So in 1918, Sigurd was admitted to UW-Madison to complete an agriculture degree.
[0:23:55 – 0:24:07] Erik: At the same time, the War Department created Student Army Training Corps, and Sigurd was enlisted while the government would pay for his education, plus a private’s salary, as he split schooling and combat training.
[0:24:08 – 0:24:13] Adam: So he didn’t actually ever go to war, but he kind of started to train, just in case.
[0:24:13 – 0:24:15] Adam: He really dodged one there.
[0:24:16 – 0:24:17] Erik: Yep.
[0:24:17 – 0:24:25] Erik: But on November 11th, 1918, the war ended and Sigurd, quote, went back to my barracks and wept without shame for my dream of going to war was over.
[0:24:26 – 0:24:46] Adam: mind-blowing i know thought but you know what fun yeah hanging out with the hell’s wrong with trench ah we love this is why they had to have the great war to show how terrible it was i don’t know without shame for never getting to sniff once yeah jesus uh after being discharged man different times for sure
[0:24:46 – 0:24:53] Erik: After being discharged, he found work waiting tables at frat houses and moved into a YMCA, and he completed his coursework in 1919.
[0:24:53 – 0:24:54] Erik: This is in Madtown?
[0:24:54 – 0:24:56] Erik: Without any sense of direction, yes.
[0:24:56 – 0:24:59] Adam: And he got to work a farm in the Namakagan River Valley.
[0:24:59 – 0:24:59] Adam: Right.
[0:24:59 – 0:25:02] Adam: He’s visiting all my favorite places of Wisconsin.
[0:25:02 – 0:25:29] Erik: yeah yeah no and that sounds like typical right out of high school just living in basically a flop house waiting tables for frat bros I don’t know what I’m doing with my life it’s like how anybody at this point looks at their college age student and gets fretful for like their direction just like there are so many examples endless very rarely is a life thrown off track by a few fitful years in college and he’s one more example
[0:25:33 – 0:25:47] Erik: So he accepted what the records show as his only offer to teach animal husbandry, agricultural botany, and geology at two high schools at Nashwalk and Keywatton.
[0:25:47 – 0:25:51] Erik: If you don’t know where those two are located, which I would not be surprised.
[0:25:51 – 0:25:53] Erik: Good old Nashwalk.
[0:25:53 – 0:26:16] Erik: nash walk and key one 60 miles northwest of duluth and we’re at the time among 20 cities along the masabi range oh and we’re producing half the nation’s iron ore at the ghost town now or what uh yeah probably but they’re both still around but they’re a conglomerate like high school you know when they have to like put multiple cities together you know that’s a nine man yeah basically
[0:26:17 – 0:26:29] Erik: Uh, right away, he set out to explore the area and camped in the adjacent woods almost every weekend saying of his work quote, I had no professional pride in what I was supposed to do.
[0:26:30 – 0:26:31] Erik: No sense of mission.
[0:26:31 – 0:26:35] Erik: I would do whatever was required of me, but that was all in town.
[0:26:35 – 0:26:38] Erik: I had a job to do, but out there was where I really lived.
[0:26:39 – 0:26:40] Adam: So you as a teacher.
[0:26:41 – 0:26:43] Erik: Yeah, he was a teacher of animal husbandry.
[0:26:45 – 0:26:47] Erik: I guess this is crazy that there were animal husbandry.
[0:26:47 – 0:26:47] Erik: Vets?
[0:26:47 – 0:26:49] Erik: Or is that like grooming and grazing?
[0:26:49 – 0:26:55] Erik: No, it’s like farming and when animals should be mating, how to handle maintaining a herd in the best way.
[0:27:05 – 0:27:13] Adam: Yeah, I think I read at some point that Ilya, his father, was like, you either can be a minister, a teacher, or a farmer.
[0:27:13 – 0:27:16] Adam: And those are the only acceptable professions.
[0:27:16 – 0:27:17] Adam: No, that’s for sure.
[0:27:18 – 0:27:18] Adam: The fun guy.
[0:27:18 – 0:27:19] Adam: Fun dad.
[0:27:19 – 0:27:19] Erik: Ilya.
[0:27:20 – 0:27:21] Adam: Ilya.
[0:27:21 – 0:27:21] Adam: What did I say?
[0:27:21 – 0:27:22] Adam: Ilya.
[0:27:22 – 0:27:22] Adam: Ilya.
[0:27:22 – 0:27:23] Erik: He’s not Russian.
[0:27:24 – 0:27:25] Erik: Ilya.
[0:27:25 – 0:27:30] Erik: Because Lawrence J. just turned into LJ, but Swedes say yay instead of J.
[0:27:31 – 0:27:32] Adam: Dad, I want to be a teacher.
[0:27:32 – 0:27:33] Adam: I’m teaching.
[0:27:33 – 0:27:33] Adam: I’m teaching.
[0:27:34 – 0:27:35] Erik: Yeah.
[0:27:35 – 0:27:45] Erik: So Sigurd was spending most of his free time outdoors by the end of his first school year teaching and in the process met a miner who had a remote cabin on McCarty Lake.
[0:27:45 – 0:27:49] Erik: I didn’t fact check where exactly that was, but his name was Al Kennedy.
[0:27:50 – 0:27:58] Erik: And they became such good friends that Al offered Sigurd the opportunity to come pan for gold with him for a few years in the Flin Flon region of Manitoba.
[0:28:00 – 0:28:02] Adam: I still don’t know where Flin Flam is.
[0:28:02 – 0:28:03] Adam: Yeah, it’s not on this map.
[0:28:04 – 0:28:06] Adam: Is that up north of Winnipeg?
[0:28:07 – 0:28:08] Erik: Yeah, I think that’s way, way up there.
[0:28:11 – 0:28:11] Adam: That’s up there.
[0:28:12 – 0:28:18] Erik: So the only thing that kept him from going was an ultimatum he received from Elizabeth Uhrenholt.
[0:28:19 – 0:28:23] Erik: And so, instead of going to Flin Flon, they began planning an August wedding.
[0:28:25 – 0:28:32] Erik: After his death, Elizabeth did say it was one of her biggest regrets, keeping him from exploring the great Canadian North.
[0:28:34 – 0:28:48] Erik: A tip from Al Kennedy about a vast wooded wilderness and waterways that led to the Hudson Bay just to the north and east of Nash Walk found Sigurd and four friends in Winton on June 16th.
[0:28:49 – 0:28:50] Erik: Right after the school year ended.
[0:28:50 – 0:28:51] Adam: That deserves a party horn for Winton.
[0:28:52 – 0:28:52] Erik: Winton.
[0:28:52 – 0:28:53] SPEAKER_00: Winton.
[0:28:53 – 0:28:54] SPEAKER_00: Pew, pew, pew, pew.
[0:28:55 – 0:28:55] SPEAKER_00: Pew.
[0:28:55 – 0:28:57] Erik: So they rented canoes from an outfitter in Winton.
[0:28:59 – 0:29:01] Erik: Good old Winton.
[0:29:01 – 0:29:01] Erik: Yeah.
[0:29:01 – 0:29:04] Erik: The original town of the Boundary Waters.
[0:29:05 – 0:29:06] Erik: They put it on Fall Lake.
[0:29:06 – 0:29:10] Adam: Fall Lake is actually filled with bush lattes just for Winton.
[0:29:11 – 0:29:12] Erik: That’s the Shaguar River.
[0:29:13 – 0:29:14] Erik: Flowing.
[0:29:15 – 0:29:18] Erik: A trip journal entry made while windbound on Seagull.
[0:29:18 – 0:29:21] Erik: Quote, this is beautiful.
[0:29:23 – 0:29:23] Erik: End quote.
[0:29:23 – 0:29:23] Erik: No.
[0:29:24 – 0:29:27] Erik: Everything as God made it, untouched by man.
[0:29:27 – 0:29:29] Erik: My dreams have come true.
[0:29:29 – 0:29:33] Erik: I’ve seen real wild country and have not been disappointed.
[0:29:34 – 0:29:38] Erik: Lib, which is what his name for his wife was, would love this.
[0:29:39 – 0:29:44] Erik: And if possible, we will spend a week or so on Brule Lake after we are married.
[0:29:44 – 0:29:45] Adam: Oh, boy.
[0:29:45 – 0:29:46] SPEAKER_00: Wow.
[0:29:46 – 0:29:48] SPEAKER_00: Brule.
[0:29:48 – 0:29:50] SPEAKER_00: Better bring a floaty.
[0:29:50 – 0:29:52] Adam: Bring a big flamingo.
[0:29:52 – 0:29:58] Erik: I can’t help but continuously think of when I get home and Lib waiting for her man.
[0:29:59 – 0:30:04] Erik: So, yeah, I spent a couple of weeks out there with some friends, basically paddled from fall all the way over to the Gunflint Trail.
[0:30:05 – 0:30:07] Erik: This is his first experience with the Boundary Waters.
[0:30:10 – 0:30:11] Erik: He’s on Seagull, windbound.
[0:30:11 – 0:30:12] Erik: Windbound on Seagull.
[0:30:12 – 0:30:13] Erik: What else is new?
[0:30:13 – 0:30:26] Erik: Sigurd and Elizabeth were married on her family farm on August 8th, 1921, and announced their plans to honeymoon for almost a month, canoeing and camping along the Canadian border.
[0:30:28 – 0:30:45] Erik: After adjusting to his new wife’s somewhat slower pace, it seemed the trip went off swimmingly with one creepy moment on a portage landing to Otter Track Lake where someone had posted a sign that said, quote, wild man, last seen east just across the portage.
[0:30:48 – 0:30:49] Adam: Is that a joke?
[0:30:49 – 0:30:49] Adam: That seems like a sick joke.
[0:30:49 – 0:30:50] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:30:50 – 0:30:51] Erik: They turned back and found another way.
[0:30:51 – 0:30:52] Erik: I just love the wild.
[0:30:52 – 0:30:53] Adam: What?
[0:30:53 – 0:30:53] Erik: They turned back?
[0:30:53 – 0:30:54] Adam: Yeah.
[0:30:54 – 0:30:54] Adam: What do you mean?
[0:30:54 – 0:30:55] Adam: Would you keep pressing?
[0:30:55 – 0:30:58] Adam: Wild man like a Mamagwese?
[0:30:58 – 0:30:58] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:30:58 – 0:31:01] Erik: I remember that one guy a few years back who was just tromping around.
[0:31:01 – 0:31:02] Erik: Yeah.
[0:31:02 – 0:31:06] Adam: I wouldn’t want to run into him trading like knives for fish.
[0:31:06 – 0:31:09] Adam: Hey, you want to trade a fish hook for being a thing of beef jerky?
[0:31:10 – 0:31:11] UNKNOWN: Wild man.
[0:31:11 – 0:31:11] Adam: Wild man.
[0:31:12 – 0:31:12] Adam: Wild man ahead.
[0:31:13 – 0:31:15] Adam: Otter track is just lousy.
[0:31:15 – 0:31:16] Adam: You know, time is a flat circle.
[0:31:16 – 0:31:20] Adam: There’s always, every 22 years or so, there’s a wild man on otter track.
[0:31:20 – 0:31:22] Erik: It’s just the early days of Benny Ambrose.
[0:31:25 – 0:31:30] Erik: After the trip, they rode a bus back to Nash Walk and settled into an upper flat near the high school.
[0:31:31 – 0:31:46] Erik: With his thoughts now constantly on wanting to spend as much time outdoors and how to accomplish this, he considered a career as a writer, or in the natural resource field of some sort, and all but decided that he would travel the wilderness and write about his experiences.
[0:31:47 – 0:31:57] Erik: Yet a steady income was still required, so he decided to return to the University of Wisconsin and earn a master’s degree in geology to become a field geologist.
[0:31:58 – 0:32:03] Erik: Over the course of a semester, Olson was greatly influenced by two professors, C.K.
[0:32:03 – 0:32:08] Erik: Leith and Alexander Winchell, specifically with relation to the Earth’s…
[0:32:09 – 0:32:14] Erik: its continual shaping over millions of years and its relationship to time.
[0:32:15 – 0:32:35] Erik: But alas, he was not happy realizing along the way that success in the field of geology would mean working for mining companies, foreseen cognitive dissonance to him as he saw geology as, quote, a way of understanding the land itself, the key to values, not to be processed or sold.
[0:32:38 – 0:32:39] Erik: LOL.
[0:32:40 – 0:32:47] Erik: This paired with the fact that Elizabeth was pregnant on the Urenholtz farm caused him to quit school before his second semester.
[0:32:48 – 0:32:56] Erik: With fortuitous timing, though, as the school superintendent from Ely, Minnesota, arrived to look for immediate teaching help at the high school.
[0:32:56 – 0:32:57] Erik: He was hired on the spot.
[0:32:58 – 0:33:08] Erik: After the discovery of iron ore deposits known as the Vermilion Range, Ely was hacked into existence from the surrounding wilderness in the early 1880s.
[0:33:09 – 0:33:14] Erik: As four new mines were opened, Ely developed rapidly on the south side of Shagwa Lake.
[0:33:15 – 0:33:21] Erik: For the longest time, Ely was a rough place, with four churches, five brothels, and 20 saloons.
[0:33:21 – 0:33:30] Erik: Two of which, one was called the Bucket of Blood, and another one was called First and Last Chance.
[0:33:30 – 0:33:35] Adam: We should someday retire to Ely and open up a saloon called Bucket of Blood.
[0:33:35 – 0:33:36] Erik: Bucket of Blood.
[0:33:38 – 0:33:44] Erik: An evangelist to the area declared the only difference between Ely and hell is that Ely has a railroad leading to it.
[0:33:47 – 0:33:48] Erik: Oh, man.
[0:33:48 – 0:33:49] Adam: Bucket of Blood?
[0:33:49 – 0:33:51] Erik: Bucket of Blood was one of the names of the 20 saloons.
[0:33:51 – 0:33:52] Erik: Five brothels.
[0:33:53 – 0:33:56] Adam: Breakfast served all day at the Bucket of Blood.
[0:33:56 – 0:33:58] Erik: You want a little side of blood with that beer?
[0:34:00 – 0:34:19] Erik: When the Ellisons arrived during Prohibition in 1923, the streets had calmed down, but the infrastructure was not keeping up with demands, and they had to move into essentially a poorly heated former coal shed for a few months before finally finding a house on Boundary Street.
[0:34:20 – 0:34:28] Erik: Seven months, seven months after they arrived in Ely, Elizabeth gave birth to Sigurd Thorn on September 15th, 1923.
[0:34:28 – 0:34:38] Erik: With the story often being told that the new father earned the glares of hospital staff for leaving hours after the birth to take advantage of duck opener.
[0:34:40 – 0:34:42] Adam: He’s got a thing for the ducks, huh?
[0:34:43 – 0:34:45] Adam: Skipping out on a lot of important things for ducks.
[0:34:46 – 0:34:54] Erik: A friend wrote in his journal, a son was born while Sig, with tears in his eyes, stood in a duck blind, firing away to open the duck season.
[0:34:55 – 0:35:01] Erik: Though a letter Sigurd wrote to Elizabeth’s sister makes both of these accounts somewhat dubious.
[0:35:01 – 0:35:05] Erik: Little Sig is over in the corner in his crib, chuckling contently to himself.
[0:35:06 – 0:35:09] Erik: Guess he must be glad duck season opens tomorrow.
[0:35:10 – 0:35:12] Erik: Um, so not a hundred percent.
[0:35:12 – 0:35:14] Erik: My question is when do babies start chuckling?
[0:35:14 – 0:35:16] Erik: I didn’t think they were chuckling at the day one.
[0:35:16 – 0:35:18] Adam: Day two is the chucklers.
[0:35:18 – 0:35:22] Erik: So, uh, yeah, I kind of have, I’m a little, I’m questioning all accounts here.
[0:35:23 – 0:35:24] Adam: He was out duck hunting.
[0:35:24 – 0:35:26] Adam: He’s just trying to cover his tracks.
[0:35:26 – 0:35:31] Adam: He heard people are miffed about it and he’s like, well, I’ll write this letter and submit it to my archivist.
[0:35:34 – 0:35:41] Erik: To supplement his teaching wages and quench his thirst for outdoor adventure, he got work in the summer at Wilderness Outfitters.
[0:35:42 – 0:36:01] Erik: He learned by trial and error as he navigated the waterways of Quetico Provincial Park, which actually was created in 1909 as a pine reserve, and then a provincial park in 1913, as well as the Superior National Forest, which at the time was divided into three sections.
[0:36:02 – 0:36:12] Erik: Sigurd learned the hard way of the never-done style of guide’s work and would often push his clients relentlessly in the assumption they were from the cities and thus wanted a rugged experience.
[0:36:13 – 0:36:23] Erik: Over the course of his many differently able-bodied and opinionated clients, tremendously beneficial skills of diplomacy were learned.
[0:36:24 – 0:36:29] Erik: His life up to this point had been one he would have admitted lacked meaning.
[0:36:29 – 0:36:34] Erik: His guided trips into the wilderness provided the seeds of his own new faith.
[0:36:35 – 0:36:40] Erik: And from a peak overlooking Robinson Lake at sunset, he wrote in his journal, quote, quote,
[0:36:45 – 0:36:51] Erik: a bit of life on the edge of creation and the world itself moving perceptively away from the sun.
[0:36:52 – 0:36:57] Erik: At that moment, so perfect was the illusion that I could actually feel and see the movement.
[0:36:57 – 0:37:09] Erik: And then, more than any other time, did I realize my closeness with the rest of the universe, that perfect communion with the beginnings of all things, a oneness with creation.
[0:37:10 – 0:37:18] Erik: For a long time, I sat without moving until it was dark and the western sky a soft diffusion of color.
[0:37:20 – 0:37:29] Erik: The ongoing writings and observations convinced him that wilderness in particular could play a crucial spiritual role for modern civilization.
[0:37:33 – 0:37:42] Erik: In October 1925, he was on the north end of Low Lake, outside of Ely, where he witnessed something that made him return to writing.
[0:37:43 – 0:37:58] Erik: It was a trapper chopping wood in preparations for winter, and he thought to himself, I must live in a cabin like that, be the trapper, write of the life around me, never again listen to bells or schedules, never again have to live indoors.
[0:38:01 – 0:38:04] Erik: He sent three animal stories to New York in early 1926.
[0:38:06 – 0:38:11] Erik: Vengeance of the Puppet, The Fugitive, and Snow Wings.
[0:38:11 – 0:38:12] Adam: He wrote The Fugitive?
[0:38:14 – 0:38:15] Adam: Unbelievable, the one-armed man.
[0:38:15 – 0:38:16] Erik: Yeah, yeah.
[0:38:17 – 0:38:19] Erik: Traces its roots all the way back to the early 20s.
[0:38:20 – 0:38:20] Adam: Unbelievable.
[0:38:20 – 0:38:21] Erik: Yeah.
[0:38:22 – 0:38:26] Erik: This was right around the time he got caught up in the first conflict over canoe country.
[0:38:28 – 0:38:28] UNKNOWN: Two years.
[0:38:29 – 0:38:31] Erik: Roads were being proposed.
[0:38:31 – 0:38:41] Erik: The Fernberg, which would connect Ely to the Gunflint Trail, 50 miles, and the Echo Trail connecting Ely and Buick, about 40 miles.
[0:38:42 – 0:38:43] Erik: Why, you ask?
[0:38:45 – 0:38:49] Erik: The idea was to gain more access to preventing accidents.
[0:38:50 – 0:38:52] Erik: wildfires in prevention.
[0:38:52 – 0:38:53] Adam: There’s Buick.
[0:38:53 – 0:38:55] Erik: On the very corner of the map over there.
[0:38:55 – 0:38:56] Erik: We got Buick.
[0:38:56 – 0:39:00] Erik: So they have more access to fighting fires to protect the precious, precious lumber.
[0:39:01 – 0:39:02] Erik: And to promote tourism.
[0:39:03 – 0:39:08] Erik: And, you know, at the time, wilderness preservation was in its infancy.
[0:39:08 – 0:39:12] Erik: And the only Midwestern conservation group was the Isaac Walton League.
[0:39:13 – 0:39:14] Erik: And they advocated.
[0:39:14 – 0:39:14] Erik: Cool guys.
[0:39:15 – 0:39:15] Erik: Cool guys.
[0:39:15 – 0:39:17] Erik: And they advocated entirely against both.
[0:39:18 – 0:39:21] Erik: You know, roads which local business leaders.
[0:39:21 – 0:39:24] Adam: So the Fernberg was going to connect to the Gunland?
[0:39:24 – 0:39:25] Adam: Yeah, that’s what they.
[0:39:25 – 0:39:25] Adam: That was the original point.
[0:39:26 – 0:39:27] Adam: Was it going to follow like the Keck Trail or what?
[0:39:28 – 0:39:35] Erik: You know, I think that was probably an originally abandoned logging road that they were just going to continue following.
[0:39:35 – 0:39:37] Adam: That’s the road that would have been.
[0:39:37 – 0:39:37] Adam: Yeah.
[0:39:38 – 0:39:38] Adam: Sick.
[0:39:38 – 0:39:40] Adam: Yeah.
[0:39:40 – 0:39:45] Adam: I mean, I think I knew that, but I didn’t realize it was just the Fernberg was going to keep going.
[0:39:45 – 0:39:53] Erik: Yeah, so they sought to take tourism… Oh, no, so this is a big point that I kind of learned a little bit more, and it makes sense.
[0:39:54 – 0:40:06] Erik: So, you know, we always talk about… Not always, but I feel like I talk about how there’s much more opinions like anti-wilderness, anti…
[0:40:06 – 0:40:09] Erik: that’s canoe-based on the west side in Ely.
[0:40:10 – 0:40:11] Erik: And I’ve always just been like, whoa.
[0:40:11 – 0:40:12] Adam: We always do talk about this.
[0:40:12 – 0:40:13] Erik: It’s always, whoa.
[0:40:13 – 0:40:17] Erik: It’s just been because they took away the mines and logging to make the park.
[0:40:17 – 0:40:17] Erik: Yeah.
[0:40:18 – 0:40:23] Erik: And one thing that was very helpful for me to learn in this, and it wasn’t necessarily that the people of Ely felt like they were…
[0:40:24 – 0:40:38] Erik: by the creation of the wilderness being limited in their logging and mining, what they, what their thoughts at this time was they had been recently abandoned by many logging companies and many mining companies.
[0:40:39 – 0:40:42] Erik: And they sought to take tourism into their own hands.
[0:40:42 – 0:40:46] Erik: The only form of like livelihood that they still found.
[0:40:46 – 0:40:47] Erik: And, uh,
[0:40:48 – 0:40:51] Erik: This was a form of something that they could control.
[0:40:51 – 0:40:56] Erik: So when the government starts coming in and saying, well, you can’t do your tourism in these ways and then not in this way.
[0:40:57 – 0:40:59] Erik: So it wasn’t that they wanted to mine and log the boundary waters.
[0:40:59 – 0:41:04] Erik: They just saw the opportunities for resorts fly in and fishing and all this.
[0:41:04 – 0:41:07] Adam: But easier to get tourists in there if they had a road right through the middle of it.
[0:41:07 – 0:41:07] Adam: Yeah, exactly.
[0:41:07 – 0:41:08] Erik: And that too.
[0:41:08 – 0:41:11] Erik: So like they were… All the locals were essentially…
[0:41:12 – 0:41:16] Erik: dumbfounded when this conservation group came out at the time and was like opposing these roads.
[0:41:17 – 0:41:27] Erik: Um, so they didn’t want some, another outside entity that would cut and run like so many previous big logging and mining operations had done.
[0:41:28 – 0:41:40] Erik: Um, so the local newspaper, the Ely minor, uh, saw the, uh, Isaac Walton leagues position on roads as quote foreign to the principles of democracy and striking at the very root of Americanism.
[0:41:40 – 0:41:40] Erik: Um,
[0:41:41 – 0:41:43] Erik: It’s a newspaper line right there.
[0:41:43 – 0:41:44] Adam: It’s a real whiz bang.
[0:41:44 – 0:41:45] Erik: Yeah.
[0:41:46 – 0:41:50] Erik: So locals who opposed the road developments became outcasts and targets of mean-spirited gossip.
[0:41:51 – 0:41:56] Erik: There’s little known about specific involvement at this point from Sigurd, but he did oppose it.
[0:41:58 – 0:42:05] Erik: And through the help of Aldo Leopold, 1926, a compromise was reached.
[0:42:05 – 0:42:08] Erik: The Fernberg would only run 20 miles out of town to a fire tower.
[0:42:09 – 0:42:09] Adam: There it is.
[0:42:10 – 0:42:11] Erik: Yeah.
[0:42:11 – 0:42:21] Erik: And the Echo Trail would be completely built, but it would not have proposed spurs up to Lac La Croix or Loon or Trout Lakes.
[0:42:21 – 0:42:28] Erik: So basically just the road, which would have severely cut in if they would have done any of those spur roads.
[0:42:29 – 0:42:43] Erik: Some of the opponents to these roads, their fears were greatly realized, and quickly, as 33 resorts were built on formerly wild land made accessible by the new roads, shrinking the American side of the wilderness.
[0:42:44 – 0:42:53] Erik: On Sigurd’s side, none of his animal stories were picked up, but he did sell a piece on fly fishing for largemouth to field and stream for $25.00.
[0:42:55 – 0:42:57] Adam: That’s some good get for freelance writing.
[0:42:57 – 0:42:59] Erik: Yeah, that’s some good depression era.
[0:43:00 – 0:43:00] Adam: 1920s.
[0:43:00 – 0:43:01] Adam: Yeah, that’s pretty good.
[0:43:01 – 0:43:07] Adam: I mean, I’ve been paid less for freelance writing and I didn’t live in the 1920s.
[0:43:07 – 0:43:07] Erik: Right.
[0:43:08 – 0:43:11] Adam: Did his minister father teach him to fly fish?
[0:43:11 – 0:43:16] Erik: No, I don’t think he learned anything like outdoorsmanship, hunting, fishing.
[0:43:16 – 0:43:23] Erik: He was kind of just all taught by locals, people that he met along the way.
[0:43:23 – 0:43:29] Adam: I was picturing kind of like a river runs through it thing where he’s a strict father, but he did teach the fly fishing.
[0:43:30 – 0:43:32] Erik: Not as far as I could tell in the book.
[0:43:33 – 0:43:41] Erik: So on New Year’s Day 1929, Border Lakes Outfitting Company was formed by the purchase of J.C. Russell’s Outfitting Company.
[0:43:42 – 0:43:48] Erik: Sigurd was one of three owners, between him, Wally Hansen, and Marvin Peterson.
[0:43:50 – 0:44:05] Erik: And it was on a trip with the University of Illinois zoologist Alvin Kahn in the Quantico Superior Wilderness that he first thought ecology as a concept and that he may want to broaden his scope with another degree.
[0:44:06 – 0:44:15] Erik: In struggling with thoughts of meticulously classifying and analyzing, he spent some time with the writings of Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and W.H.
[0:44:15 – 0:44:16] Erik: Hudson.
[0:44:17 – 0:44:25] Erik: He made more unsuccessful attempts at writing his own fictional logging adventure, stories only to have them rejected and criticized by publishers.
[0:44:26 – 0:44:27] Adam: He did like loggers.
[0:44:27 – 0:44:27] Adam: Yeah.
[0:44:27 – 0:44:29] Adam: He’s like, they had to real panache those loggers.
[0:44:30 – 0:44:41] Erik: Towards the end of this whole story, that’s one of the things that comes up is his opinions on some things privately and what he actually truly wanted to see.
[0:44:41 – 0:44:51] Erik: And because of those, in some people’s minds, hypocrisies made him a bit of a point of contention as a person in the community.
[0:44:51 – 0:44:51] Erik: Yeah.
[0:44:52 – 0:45:04] Erik: But from some of his publishers, quote, These critiques created a fear of impossibility as it came to writing, and he began more seriously testing the waters of scholarly research and spent some time trailing wolves and deer.
[0:45:04 – 0:45:05] Erik: It should be noted that
[0:45:18 – 0:45:20] Erik: He was not a champion of the wolf right away.
[0:45:22 – 0:45:28] Erik: In some of these early research phases, quote, the timber wolf is the greatest destroyer.
[0:45:31 – 0:45:40] Erik: of big game in this area, and, quote, will kill for the joy of it, end quote, a great deal of unnecessary killing goes on.
[0:45:41 – 0:45:53] Erik: After a winter of research in the field on other predators, he lamented that while a master’s thesis on wolves might be, quote, all right in its way, it still bores me terribly, all of it.
[0:45:54 – 0:45:56] Adam: Did he know they eat blueberries?
[0:45:57 – 0:45:59] Erik: I don’t know if that ever came up.
[0:45:59 – 0:46:00] Erik: Do they eat blueberries?
[0:46:00 – 0:46:01] Adam: It just came out.
[0:46:01 – 0:46:04] Adam: It’s confirmed that blueberries are a huge part of their diet.
[0:46:04 – 0:46:05] Erik: Just a little nibbling wolf.
[0:46:06 – 0:46:06] Erik: Interesting.
[0:46:07 – 0:46:08] Adam: Who doesn’t love a good blueberry?
[0:46:08 – 0:46:08] Adam: Yeah.
[0:46:09 – 0:46:09] Adam: I don’t trust any animal.
[0:46:09 – 0:46:11] Adam: You missed an opportunity there, Sig.
[0:46:11 – 0:46:13] Erik: It’s like a musher that doesn’t accept a corn dog.
[0:46:14 – 0:46:14] Adam: Yep.
[0:46:15 – 0:46:15] Adam: Weird.
[0:46:16 – 0:46:20] Erik: These thoughts and a close call with death from a serious cold.
[0:46:21 – 0:46:23] Erik: Remember this time period we’re in here.
[0:46:23 – 0:46:24] Erik: Colds could kill you.
[0:46:26 – 0:46:29] Erik: Had him applying for graduate schools in February of 1931.
[0:46:29 – 0:46:32] Erik: By the fall, entered the University of Illinois.
[0:46:33 – 0:46:34] Erik: He hated it.
[0:46:35 – 0:46:39] Erik: Quote, I hate the very sound of the word ecology.
[0:46:40 – 0:46:42] Erik: When I get through here, I am through.
[0:46:42 – 0:46:48] Erik: I will bury it away someplace and never again, as long as I ever live, touch it.
[0:46:50 – 0:46:53] Adam: You can get a cold just going in the bucket of blood.
[0:46:53 – 0:46:54] Adam: You don’t even have to have a drink there.
[0:46:54 – 0:46:55] Adam: Just walking by on the streets.
[0:46:55 – 0:46:58] Adam: Yeah, just going near the bucket of blood and you may catch a cold.
[0:46:59 – 0:47:02] Erik: At this time, the bank in Ely… Is that the episode title?
[0:47:02 – 0:47:03] Erik: Bucket of Blood?
[0:47:03 – 0:47:04] Erik: It better be.
[0:47:05 – 0:47:09] Erik: At this time, the bank in Ely failed and with it most of their family savings.
[0:47:10 – 0:47:27] Erik: His assistantship provided just enough to get by on and a cheap house right on the railroad track to be filled with his wife and two boys who had given up friends and family in Ely to be woken three times a night by the clattering roar of the Panama Limited.
[0:47:29 – 0:47:34] Erik: All the while, Elizabeth was growing tired of a complaining husband.
[0:47:35 – 0:47:36] Erik: He seems high maintenance.
[0:47:37 – 0:47:39] Erik: Right away, I think he’s struggling.
[0:47:40 – 0:47:41] Erik: There’s a lot of this in the book.
[0:47:41 – 0:47:44] Adam: I can’t believe Elizabeth put up with this shit.
[0:47:44 – 0:47:57] Erik: Following along and you want more interest in some of the more fine decisions and points that went into what made him who he is.
[0:47:57 – 0:48:00] Erik: These are very tumultuous years of him searching for meaning and
[0:48:01 – 0:48:12] Erik: And there’s a little bit more in the realm of religion and theology and what he saw as true and not that David Backus goes into in fine form.
[0:48:13 – 0:48:22] Erik: But yeah, he struggled for, I mean, many decades to find a true meaning and something that made him happy.
[0:48:24 – 0:48:28] Erik: The day after Christmas, Sigurd wrote, she was angry and asked why he could not be happy.
[0:48:29 – 0:48:30] Erik: He did not know the answer.
[0:48:30 – 0:48:32] Erik: Quote, Aren’t we all?
[0:48:43 – 0:48:57] Erik: Yeah, he went about his studies, but once again concluded he wanted to paint either in word or color the pictures that had been before me and spent all of his free time working on his writing.
[0:48:58 – 0:49:12] Erik: His master thesis, The Life History of the Timberwolf and the Coyote, a Study in Predatory Animal, relied on his materials gathered in 1930, when his views on wolves were particularly dire.
[0:49:13 – 0:49:22] Erik: But from the very first paragraph of this thesis, it was clear he had been converted on most original attacks as to their wasteful, joyful killing.
[0:49:23 – 0:49:39] Erik: Quote, their depredations have been grossly overestimated and determined that what was once thought of to be wasteful killing and leaving of many deer in a night by a pack was simply an act of storage as they would return to feed days if not weeks later.
[0:49:40 – 0:49:46] Erik: His work was cited for decades and was the first scientific study of the wolf anywhere in the world.
[0:49:47 – 0:49:47] Erik: The first one?
[0:49:48 – 0:49:48] Erik: Yep.
[0:49:48 – 0:49:49] Erik: He didn’t even like wolves at first.
[0:49:50 – 0:49:51] Erik: Right.
[0:49:51 – 0:49:52] Erik: He saw the light.
[0:49:52 – 0:49:56] Erik: He basically said he hates ecology and then wrote a full thesis on wolves.
[0:49:56 – 0:49:57] Adam: Actually, you know, it’s kind of neat.
[0:49:57 – 0:49:59] Erik: What do you know?
[0:50:00 – 0:50:05] Erik: Six weeks before his thesis was approved, while sitting in economic ecology class.
[0:50:05 – 0:50:06] Adam: That sounds like hell.
[0:50:06 – 0:50:13] Erik: Yeah, he wrote in his notebook, quote, I am reaching a point where the farcical nature of what I am doing is beginning to impress me.
[0:50:14 – 0:50:15] Erik: This is not what I want.
[0:50:16 – 0:50:18] Erik: I’m going away, never to come back.
[0:50:21 – 0:50:28] Erik: In 1932, the Olsens finally returned to northern Minnesota and he began mostly where they left off.
[0:50:30 – 0:50:33] Erik: And the recently opened junior college.
[0:50:34 – 0:50:36] Adam: Bucket of blood tech.
[0:50:36 – 0:50:37] Adam: Bucket of blood tech.
[0:50:38 – 0:50:40] Erik: He began teaching at the junior college in Ely.
[0:50:42 – 0:50:50] Erik: In 1933, he traveled to Minneapolis to testify at the first public hearing on management of the Quantico Superior Canoe Country.
[0:50:51 – 0:50:52] Erik: At issue…
[0:50:53 – 0:51:05] Erik: immense water power development plan proposed by Edward W. Backus, a Minnesota lumberman, continent’s fourth largest newspaper manufacturer.
[0:51:07 – 0:51:18] Erik: Up to this point, he had already installed two dams at the Namican slash Cabotogama flowage, and he wanted to install nine more in between Rainey and Winnipeg lakes.
[0:51:20 – 0:51:25] Erik: The result of which would have caused flooding of several thousand miles of canoe country.
[0:51:25 – 0:51:33] Erik: Specifically, the waters of Lac La Croix would have raised 15 feet, submerging all 300 of its islands.
[0:51:34 – 0:51:37] Adam: And all of its weird hatches, for sure.
[0:51:37 – 0:51:37] Adam: Yes.
[0:51:37 – 0:51:39] Erik: The hatch would have never been discovered.
[0:51:40 – 0:51:40] Adam: Sick.
[0:51:40 – 0:51:41] Adam: And this is a Bacchus?
[0:51:41 – 0:51:44] Adam: Is this any relation to the author of the book?
[0:51:44 – 0:51:52] Erik: David Bacchus is B-A-C-K-E-S. Edward Bacchus is B-A-C-K-U-S. No relation.
[0:51:55 – 0:52:06] Erik: In the process of testifying, he actually received applause and remarked later on it, quote, Somehow I have this power of conveying my enthusiasm to others, particularly men.
[0:52:06 – 0:52:11] Erik: I can make them see and feel what I see and feel of the out of doors.
[0:52:13 – 0:52:18] Erik: This was also around the time he was noticed and commended by Ernest C. Oberholzer.
[0:52:19 – 0:52:28] Erik: He was an emerging leader in wilderness preservation, and soon thereafter began bringing Olson into active involvement within the Quetico Superior Council.
[0:52:29 – 0:52:39] Erik: With growing participation in conservation efforts came two articles focusing on the matter in 1934, both taking issue with federal management of the Superior National Forests.
[0:52:42 – 0:52:44] Erik: Olson argued that such a result was inevitable.
[0:52:47 – 0:53:01] Erik: The last few years have shown us that these so-called fire protection roads have slowly graduated from that lowly status to well-graded and smoothly surfaced highways over which automobiles can safely travel with comfort.
[0:53:02 – 0:53:06] Erik: Such is the inevitable evolution of a fire protection trail in the superior.
[0:53:07 – 0:53:21] Erik: What is more, as soon as these trails have assumed the character of fairly well-traveled roads, private individuals invariably construct, oftentimes with the aid of the counties, lateral branches into private holdings of lakeshore property or timber.
[0:53:22 – 0:53:30] Erik: When this begins to happen, the country immediately adjacent to any main trail becomes a network and the former wilderness is a thing of the past.
[0:53:32 – 0:53:38] Erik: Olson argued that it was time to hold the line in Superior National Forest and to allow no more roads.
[0:53:39 – 0:53:48] Erik: Olson ended the article with a stirring statement that showed his ability to use the rhythm of language for emotional effect.
[0:53:49 – 0:54:17] Erik: “…to cut up the superior with innumerable roads, within which will ultimately be found highly managed plots of timber, to settle in its midst working communities, to make of it, in other words, a highly specialized timber production plant, will be a tragedy to all lovers of the wilderness, a tragedy whose full significance will not be appreciated until the last wild place is gone forever.”
[0:54:20 – 0:54:22] Erik: So he’s getting involved.
[0:54:26 – 0:54:27] Adam: He’s feeling that flow.
[0:54:27 – 0:54:27] Erik: Yeah.
[0:54:29 – 0:54:35] Erik: Though these articles showed his devotion to absolute conservation, they lacked his lessons of political balance.
[0:54:35 – 0:54:45] Erik: He had learned as a guide, and the Quetico Superior Council were somewhat leery of his black and white, sometimes inflammatory language for quite a few years.
[0:54:46 – 0:54:53] Erik: So he was still learning his ways when it came to cooperation with the other side.
[0:54:56 – 0:55:05] Erik: April 1934, there came a technical victory against Bacchus and his proposed water power construction.
[0:55:06 – 0:55:07] Erik: Classic government.
[0:55:08 – 0:55:09] Erik: It was neither rejected or approved.
[0:55:10 – 0:55:11] Adam: It was suspended.
[0:55:11 – 0:55:11] Erik: Yeah.
[0:55:12 – 0:55:13] Adam: We’re not going to hear this case.
[0:55:14 – 0:55:16] Erik: Figure it out.
[0:55:16 – 0:55:18] Erik: The battle created publicity, though.
[0:55:19 – 0:55:23] Erik: And from that came the President’s Committee for the Cuetico Superior Region.
[0:55:24 – 0:55:28] Erik: The President’s Committee made Oberholzer’s goal of an international treaty.
[0:55:30 – 0:55:42] Erik: The official goal of the White House, he and two other Quetico Superior Council officers members, one of which at the time was Bob Marshall, a 33-year-old director of U.S. Indian Affairs Forestry Division.
[0:55:42 – 0:55:44] Erik: He was very specific.
[0:55:45 – 0:55:49] Erik: Born in New York City, but recognized the importance of wild places.
[0:55:50 – 0:55:59] Erik: And on June 1st, 1935, with the support of Oberholzer, Aldo Leopold, five others, Marshall proposed a pamphlet announcing…
[0:56:01 – 0:56:19] Erik: For the purpose of fighting off invasion of the wilderness and of stimulating an appreciation of its multi-form emotional, intellectual, and scientific values, we are forming an organization to be known as the Wilderness Society.
[0:56:21 – 0:56:21] Erik: WS.
[0:56:21 – 0:56:23] SPEAKER_00: The WS.
[0:56:23 – 0:56:31] Erik: Sigurd Olsen heard of the group from Oberholzer, and on April 15th, 1935, he applied for a charter membership.
[0:56:31 – 0:56:32] Erik: Quote,
[0:56:46 – 0:56:50] Erik: Olson one day would become the wilderness society’s president.
[0:56:53 – 0:56:55] Adam: Um, he’s very enthusiastic.
[0:56:56 – 0:56:56] Erik: Early.
[0:56:56 – 0:56:56] Erik: Yes.
[0:56:56 – 0:57:08] Erik: Early in 1936, after friend and Dean of the junior college, Julio Santo died, figured out of mere sense of pride, applied for the job.
[0:57:09 – 0:57:11] Erik: Upon being given the job, he felt miserable.
[0:57:12 – 0:57:12] Erik: Of course.
[0:57:14 – 0:57:14] Erik: Um,
[0:57:15 – 0:57:20] Erik: Quote, I sometimes feel these days as though the net has wound itself more and more closely around me.
[0:57:21 – 0:57:25] Erik: Now there will be no escape, and what was hard before becomes doubly impossible now.
[0:57:26 – 0:57:29] Erik: My leave of absence is out of the question under the new setup.
[0:57:30 – 0:57:36] Erik: So many have congratulated me and so wholeheartedly that there is no question in my mind but that they are really happy about it.
[0:57:37 – 0:57:44] Erik: It is one of the compensations of living in a small town and is recognition which usually does not come unless one dies.”
[0:57:45 – 0:57:49] Erik: What I wish I could do is go into this thing joyfully and make Elizabeth happy.
[0:57:53 – 0:57:54] Adam: What is it, like a desk job?
[0:57:55 – 0:57:57] Erik: I mean, he’s a superintendent of a very small college.
[0:57:57 – 0:58:00] Adam: I can’t imagine there’s… Not getting on very many field trips then.
[0:58:01 – 0:58:02] Adam: Probably not.
[0:58:03 – 0:58:05] Adam: The net has wound itself tightly.
[0:58:06 – 0:58:08] Adam: Yeah.
[0:58:08 – 0:58:10] Erik: So in 1935, we’re moving into more…
[0:58:12 – 0:58:14] Erik: Boundary Waters, Quetico Superior.
[0:58:14 – 0:58:15] Erik: It doesn’t have the name Boundary Waters yet.
[0:58:16 – 0:58:16] Erik: I shouldn’t say that.
[0:58:17 – 0:58:19] Erik: The Quetico Superior area.
[0:58:21 – 0:58:39] Erik: Another issue was created by Henry Chosa because in 1935, he and several others who owned land along the Four Mile Portage, which runs at the time, what was that up to like Jackfish Bay from the Fernberg area?
[0:58:41 – 0:58:44] Erik: You can find information on exactly where the four mile portage was.
[0:58:44 – 0:58:44] Erik: Yes.
[0:58:45 – 0:58:55] Erik: But they threatened to erect barricades and enact a toll system in hopes that it would force resort owners to agree to a full blown road access to Basswood Lake.
[0:58:55 – 0:59:00] Erik: Conservationists yet again feared expansion into the wilds and it went to court for years.
[0:59:02 – 0:59:20] Erik: As the president’s committee was discussing alternatives, Olson went into action on the local level and addressed the community as an attempt from a new chapter of the Isaac Walton League at an Ely Hotel named the Forest Hotel on March 9, 1937.
[0:59:23 – 0:59:34] Erik: Quote, this town has gone on record time and time again as being opposed to this ideal of the international treaty proposed by the president’s Quetico Superior Committee.
[0:59:34 – 0:59:45] Erik: And there are certain individuals here who, knowing nothing about the entire plan, have accused the leaders of this movement of materialism and of trying to benefit financially in everything they did.
[0:59:46 – 0:59:49] Erik: We have something here which other communities have lost long ago.
[0:59:49 – 0:59:54] Erik: And furthermore, what we have is a statewide and national significance.
[0:59:55 – 0:59:57] Erik: This country does not belong to Ely.
[0:59:57 – 0:59:59] Erik: It belongs to the entire Middle West.
[1:00:00 – 1:00:09] Erik: This being the case, however, Ely will benefit just insofar as she preserves what she has and will lose insofar as she permits the country to deteriorate.
[1:00:10 – 1:00:14] Erik: This group has been called together to form a body which might take action.
[1:00:14 – 1:00:22] Erik: It doesn’t have to be a large group, but it does have to be composed of men who are conservation-minded.
[1:00:22 – 1:00:31] Erik: Men who can act together on certain definite objectives and who will not quarrel when projects come up that might mean the desecration of our country.
[1:00:32 – 1:00:35] Erik: We want unity and coherent action.
[1:00:35 – 1:00:44] Erik: The reason the old club broke up was that a certain element came in, across the line, who were more interested in selfish views than in conservation.
[1:00:45 – 1:00:52] Erik: They did not see eye to eye with the conservation ideal, but instead made it difficult to put across any ideas without nullifying their meaning.
[1:00:53 – 1:00:56] Erik: It was at this point that he began making enemies.
[1:00:57 – 1:00:58] Adam: And just as he said in his speech.
[1:00:58 – 1:00:59] Adam: Speaking very boldly.
[1:01:00 – 1:01:05] Erik: Yes, they would accuse him of supporting wilderness regulations for his own materialistic ends.
[1:01:07 – 1:01:11] Erik: And after that speech that night, he was named president of the new chapter of the Isaac Walton League.
[1:01:14 – 1:01:19] Erik: There was a level of hypocrisy that many people were now associating with Sigurd Olsen.
[1:01:20 – 1:01:32] Erik: At its core was his partnership in owning the Border Lakes Outfitting Company, which supplemented an already hefty… Oh no, what’s that word?
[1:01:35 – 1:02:00] Erik: anyway benefit package from the hefty benefit package wage uh so he already had this wage from the school and then he was a third owner of the border lakes outfitting company all that sweet outfitting money yeah which in the middle of the depression caused resentment from locals uh who started to refer to his part of town as snob hill oh got him burned snob hill
[1:02:02 – 1:02:15] Erik: So, moreover, though, it was his financial gains and his outfitting company that took advantage of the current four-mile portage, and Basswood Lake is a jumping-off point, up against his stance that development was bad.
[1:02:16 – 1:02:23] Erik: Basswood should be protected on one hand, but I’m also using this portage to provide services to my clients that I make money from.
[1:02:23 – 1:02:25] Adam: Shore lunch, baby.
[1:02:25 – 1:02:26] Erik: Yeah.
[1:02:26 – 1:02:28] Adam: That’s what they call shore lunch.
[1:02:28 – 1:02:28] Erik: Yeah.
[1:02:29 – 1:02:50] Erik: snack time see why people were questioning what his true motivations were yeah well i think it’s pretty obvious yeah so uh there is nothing to suggest in all his writings that his wilderness activism was driven by anything but a genuine ideology though um
[1:02:51 – 1:02:54] Adam: Yeah, I mean, it seems like his heart is in the right place from his writings.
[1:02:55 – 1:02:59] Erik: Exactly, but that isn’t to say that he didn’t want a comfortable lifestyle for his family.
[1:02:59 – 1:02:59] Erik: Yeah.
[1:02:59 – 1:03:00] Erik: You know?
[1:03:00 – 1:03:01] Erik: Everybody’s got to make a buck.
[1:03:01 – 1:03:07] Erik: So, and he wanted to try to make as much money to leave the college so he could focus on writing.
[1:03:08 – 1:03:17] Erik: So, this desire to become a successful writer did blind him to a certain extent to his own slow diminishment of wilderness solitude and silence.
[1:03:18 – 1:03:43] Erik: um through the outfitting business that he owned you know the more business that he’s bringing in the more that he’s cutting into this ideal that he wants more money more problems this is actually a quote uh directly from david backus which i think sums up the um the feeling at the time the hypocrisy and probably where we’re going to leave part one this is
[1:03:45 – 1:03:46] Erik: A nice sum up.
[1:03:47 – 1:03:57] Erik: Ely’s business leaders undoubtedly recognize Olson’s beneficial relationships with Sports Afield and appreciated the publicity his articles gave to the area.
[1:03:57 – 1:04:06] Erik: They had no idea that his interest in making money from the Border Lakes was less to add to his salary as dean than to replace that salary so he could quit and write.
[1:04:07 – 1:04:15] Erik: Their problem with him in the spring of 1937, a problem that would be repeated with varying formulations in the years ahead, was this.
[1:04:16 – 1:04:27] Erik: Why was it acceptable for Sigurd Olsson to make money by bringing in to Basswood Lake as many tourists as he could, but wrong for them to help their other tourist businesses by building a road to the lake?
[1:04:28 – 1:04:32] Erik: They could not see the difference, and of course they sensed the hypocrisy.
[1:04:34 – 1:04:34] Erik: So…
[1:04:35 – 1:04:37] Adam: He had his road of his own kind in there.
[1:04:39 – 1:04:39] Adam: Right.
[1:04:39 – 1:04:40] Adam: But it’s still a road.
[1:04:40 – 1:04:40] Erik: Yeah.
[1:04:41 – 1:04:50] Erik: No, I mean, it’s, it is a very clear line of criticism that you can see people making at a time, you know, it’d be, um,
[1:04:52 – 1:04:59] Erik: I don’t know what the comparable would be, but it’s like, well, on one hand, I want this to not happen, but I use it now.
[1:05:00 – 1:05:07] Erik: But it’s also a little bit of a slippery slope where you think just because somebody wants to put in…
[1:05:08 – 1:05:21] Erik: Just because somebody’s using it as it currently exists, by putting in a road that’s, like, clearly going to create much more development than a four-mile portage, to turn it into a full-blown road, like, I feel like there is…
[1:05:22 – 1:05:24] Adam: Right, because then there’s other roads that branch off the roads.
[1:05:24 – 1:05:24] Adam: Yeah.
[1:05:25 – 1:05:25] Adam: Yeah, I feel like there is…
[1:05:25 – 1:05:26] Adam: Roads get roads.
[1:05:26 – 1:05:34] Erik: Definitely a clear line of distinction between a portage and a road with tolls on it.
[1:05:35 – 1:05:35] Erik: So…
[1:05:37 – 1:05:40] Adam: Can you imagine, what would you rather see on a portage?
[1:05:40 – 1:05:44] Adam: A toll or a sign that says wild man spotted ahead?
[1:05:44 – 1:05:45] Adam: Oh, by far wild man.
[1:05:45 – 1:05:46] Erik: For sure wild man.
[1:05:46 – 1:05:46] Adam: Absolutely.
[1:05:47 – 1:05:48] Adam: I’m still thinking it was like a hairy man.
[1:05:48 – 1:05:53] Adam: Like a, you know, this is like a cryptid.
[1:05:54 – 1:05:55] Erik: It’s just a cryptid.
[1:05:55 – 1:05:56] Erik: Oh no.
[1:05:56 – 1:05:58] Erik: Early 30s cryptid.
[1:05:58 – 1:06:00] Adam: Those are the scariest ones.
[1:06:01 – 1:06:20] Adam: well yeah i think that’s a good spot to leave it um you mentioned henry chosa was in there yeah he was i’m i’m 99 certain that marie champagne sings about henry chosa and that is like his grandfather i remember i remember when we were listening to that album and that name that dropped i pointed out i’m like oh no i’m pretty sure i’m reading about a chosa right now
[1:06:21 – 1:06:26] Adam: There’s some Chosa connection there to our boy Maurice Champagne.
[1:06:26 – 1:06:33] Erik: There’s so much detail in this book that I feel like if there is one criticism, it seems like…
[1:06:33 – 1:06:34] Erik: But it’s like, what are you going to do?
[1:06:34 – 1:06:38] Erik: Because if you try to address everything, the book would be like a thousand pages long.
[1:06:39 – 1:06:39] Erik: Like, I don’t know.
[1:06:39 – 1:06:39] Erik: Right.
[1:06:40 – 1:06:47] Adam: I don’t think that you don’t want to, you don’t end up with like a Mark Twain biography scenario, like part one, part one, which is a thousand pages.
[1:06:47 – 1:06:49] Adam: And it’s like, has anybody seen part two?
[1:06:50 – 1:06:52] Adam: It’ll come out in a hundred years.
[1:06:52 – 1:06:52] Erik: Yeah.
[1:06:52 – 1:06:54] Erik: Part one can come out a hundred years after my death.
[1:06:54 – 1:06:57] Erik: Part two can come out 200 years after my death.
[1:06:57 – 1:06:58] Adam: Precisely.
[1:06:58 – 1:06:59] Adam: That’s some really good work there.
[1:06:59 – 1:07:13] Erik: But anyway, the whole Chosa and Bacchus mining and road thing, they do clear up the road issue, but he never goes back into how they ended up the dams.
[1:07:14 – 1:07:19] Erik: I think it maybe just got kicked around in the courts long enough that they, by the time it… Just gave up on it.
[1:07:19 – 1:07:19] Erik: Yeah.
[1:07:20 – 1:07:20] Adam: Yeah.
[1:07:20 – 1:07:22] Adam: Can you imagine all those dams?
[1:07:23 – 1:07:24] Adam: Nine of them.
[1:07:24 – 1:07:24] Adam: What?
[1:07:24 – 1:07:25] Adam: There’s going to be one right there?
[1:07:26 – 1:07:31] Erik: You know, I don’t know what the specific locations would have been, but it did say between Rainey and Winnipeg.
[1:07:32 – 1:07:35] Adam: Yeah, I assume they would have had one in front of La Croix.
[1:07:36 – 1:07:40] Adam: You said it was going to raise the level of La Croix by 15 feet?
[1:07:40 – 1:07:41] Erik: 15 feet, yeah.
[1:07:41 – 1:07:42] Erik: It would have buried all 300 islands out there.
[1:07:42 – 1:07:44] Erik: It would have just been a big, big reservoir.
[1:07:45 – 1:07:48] Erik: Heading up to La Croix Reservoir, going to fish around some dead trees.
[1:07:48 – 1:07:49] Erik: Yeah.
[1:07:49 – 1:07:50] Erik: Ugh.
[1:07:50 – 1:07:51] Erik: Ugh, no.
[1:07:51 – 1:07:52] Erik: Nasty.
[1:07:53 – 1:07:53] Adam: Nasty.
[1:07:55 – 1:08:15] Adam: um yeah and in in hindsight i think we should just make the episode title sig part one yes but i hope that um maybe you’ve been making some music that maybe maybe you can name one of your songs bucket of blood bucket of blood yeah and then play that yeah i just did just whip one up
[1:08:15 – 1:08:17] Erik: I read just one more paragraph down here.
[1:08:17 – 1:08:21] Erik: It would be foolish to not just finish off with this because this will clear the road.
[1:08:21 – 1:08:23] Adam: All right, we’ll end up on that.
[1:08:23 – 1:08:40] Erik: Yeah, so the proposed road to Basswood Dust-Up was settled when Bob Marshall worked with resort owners to secure rights of way around properties owned by Chosa, and then they contributed their own land towards a new four-mile portage entirely on state and federal land.
[1:08:40 – 1:08:42] Adam: So they bypassed the Chosa Tollway.
[1:08:42 – 1:08:48] Erik: Yes, they bypassed the Chosa Tollway to put the portage on state and federal land so nobody could screw with it.
[1:08:48 – 1:08:49] Erik: And then…
[1:08:51 – 1:08:51] Erik: Okay.
[1:08:52 – 1:08:55] Erik: So that’s where we’re going to leave off.
[1:08:55 – 1:09:01] Erik: The four-mile portage we’re going to pick back up in 1937 on episode two.
[1:09:03 – 1:09:07] Erik: And it’s probably going to get more exciting.
[1:09:08 – 1:09:10] Adam: How is that even possible?
[1:09:10 – 1:09:10] Adam: I can’t wait.
[1:09:10 – 1:09:11] Adam: I’m on the edge of my seat.
[1:09:12 – 1:09:15] Adam: Let’s hurry up and hit stop so we can begin on part two.
[1:09:15 – 1:09:21] Erik: I don’t know if anything is going to top Bucket of Blood, but that was one of my more favorite tidbits from that.
[1:09:22 – 1:09:23] Erik: That was a fun detail.
[1:09:23 – 1:09:28] Adam: We’re going out for some drinks at the Bucket of Blood.
[1:09:28 – 1:09:30] SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
[1:09:45 – 1:09:45] UNKNOWN: Thank you.
[1:10:12 – 1:10:12] UNKNOWN: .
[1:10:13 – 1:10:13] UNKNOWN: .
[1:10:13 – 1:10:13] UNKNOWN: .
[1:10:41 – 1:10:41] UNKNOWN: Thank you.
