True North

 “The Listening Point” by Sigurd Olson, 1958

Born in Chicago, moved to Wisconsin and then permanently to northern Minnesota – Ely, specifically – Olson is a northern version of Thoreau, Muir and Powell.  He canoed the Quetico-Superior Boundary Waters for years as a guide and adventurer, and also paddled deep into northern Canada along the McKenzie, Athabasca and other rivers.  His was a life in love with unspoiled nature and because of it, he became a conservationist and one of the founders of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota, where boat motors are not allowed.  He also helped pass the Wilderness Act of 1964.

Olson pitched a tent along the southern elbow of L-shaped Burntside Lake near Ely one day, then built a one-room cabin, and christened it ‘the Listening Point” – as from there he could see, hear and feel the woods, water, animals, birds, fish and rocks, in every kind of weather.  Each essay in this book concentrates on an aspect of life in these northern woods.  He writes about the effect of water on the land, the cycle of northern trees, birds like the pileated woodpecker, native pictographs, portages he has known, rocks as part of geologic time, making a paddle from a tough ash tree, the omnipresent beaver and those northern canoeists and lumberjacks that became part of this nature.  Above all are his great idols – the tough French voyageurs.

In rhapsodic prose, almost poetry, Olson writes of his delight in each of these things. Reading the book gives you a feel for the immersive experience of these northern woods and lakes.  You might need a map as he references different silent and hidden lakes and rivers in the BWCA and Canada – hidden to those who have not paddled the wilderness.  Olson is not against modernity, because to him it provides a contrast to the beauty and harshness of life in the northern woods.  His is almost an aesthetic appreciation. 

Olson returns to the basics of human life, which are sometimes forgotten in the city.  The grandeur and wonder of earthly life do not pass unnoticed in this raw communion with the natural world. Here is a passage that anyone who has spent time in a tent will appreciate:

“Last night in my tent I listened to the rain.  At first it came down gently, then in a steady drumming downpour, and I lay there wondering when I would begin to feel the first rivulets creeping beneath my sleeping-bag.  The deluge continued, but there were no exploring trickles, no mist through the roof of balloon silk.  The tent, on the little rise with its thick cushion of bear-berry, had perfect drainage all around, and the ropes were tied to two good trees.  The gale could blow now and the rain come down, but I would be safe and dry the rest of the night.  I settled down luxuriously to enjoy a sound I had known on countless campsites in the wilderness.” 

The Listening Point among the rocks and trees

Olson does not spend much time on the original indigenous Chippewa / Anishinabe peoples of this area – his focus is much more on the European discoverers who came in their footsteps. Olson’s book ‘Songs of the North’ on the other hand, like this book in essay form, tracks his long canoe trip through the far north Canadian Shield country, where he encounters the Cree and other indigenous First Nation tribes.  

In a way, this is a ‘look back’ into a past which is partly disappearing, as boats and cabins began to appear around Olson’s haunt and the ‘silence’ was partly broken.  The trade and travel routes of native American and French voyageurs have become quieter and more overgrown.  Yet today you can still visit the Listening Point and its cabin and Grand Portage on the Canadian border is still grand.  Olson's beloved BWCA had 165,000 paddlers in 2020, an increase.  Given the constant changes in most of the built-world, the northern woods of Canada and the U.S. are as close to ‘unchanging’ as most of us in the U.S. will ever get – in spite of logging, pollution and increased fires.  Indeed, for him it was home.  I think that was his real point.

P.S. - As to the slogan of "True North."  Minnesota is not in the "Midwest" (middle-of-the-west) by any stretch, it is a northern state like the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.  Check a map!  Mid-north might be more appropriate.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive of reviews:  “The North is Not the ‘Midwest,’” “Northland,” “A Less Modest Proposal,” “Sulfuric Acid and the Boundary Waters,” “Reflections in the Woods,” “Klobuchar is a Hot Dish Neo-Liberal,” “Stop Tar Sands Oil,” “Into the Wild,” and “Edward Abbey.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent cut-out/used book section!

Red Frog

A Good Friday the 13^th, in August, 2021