The Singing Wilderness, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1956, is a classic of twentieth century nature writing. But for Sigurd Olson, getting his first book written and published was a long journey that depended not only on talent, but persistence, help, and a little bit of luck.The narrative below, an excerpt from A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson, tells the story from 1952, when Sigurd first began thinking about the book, until just before its publication in April 1956.

Here’s the excerpt:

That summer [of 1952] Sigurd resurrected an idea he had first thought of in the 1930s: he would write interpretive essays incorporating the joy and wonder that he felt in the outdoors, his experiences of connectedness with all life and the whole universe, and put them together in book form. “If people reading it can catch that then it is enough,” he wrote on August 9, “then everything you write will have a solid core of worthwhileness.”

But summer passed into fall, and the mallard-filled marshes near home occupied much of Sigurd’s relatively little free time from conservation work. Before long the first white flakes of winter drifted quietly down, and Sigurd’s idea once more seemed to fade away like the grass and pine needles on the snow-covered ground outside his writing shack.

Olson’s January thaw arrived in the person of his younger son’s wife, Yvonne. She and Robert came from San Francisco for a holiday visit, and Yvonne stayed over for another month. She and Robert had been married for nearly six years, but had spent little time in Ely, and to Sigurd it seemed as though he was really getting to meet Yvonne for the first time. She quickly won his heart.

“I can’t tell you how much this month has meant to us in fun and laughter and music and poetry and companionship,” Sigurd wrote to Robert on February 10, 1953, the day Yvonne left for home. “Your Vonnie has a beautiful mind. Her sense of awareness, understanding, wit and appreciation are something precious….What I am trying to tell you clumsily is that we love your Vonnie very much and always will and so shall always bless you for finding her.”

Sigurd found in Yvonne what he had never found in Elizabeth or in any of his friends in Ely: someone who read and enjoyed discussing articles, poems, and books about the human condition. It was a release for him, and possibly a relief, to have someone he could talk to about the search for meaning, that driving force of his life which few seemed to understand. And Yvonne had two other qualities Sigurd greatly admired. One was her assertiveness: she was quite willing to tell him off when he needed it. (“He loved it,” Robert recalled. “Everybody else would hunker down. She wasn’t being brow-beaten by him.”) The other was her sense of humor which, just as with Sigurd, included a silly streak. (“In fact,” Yvonne recalled with a smile, “he could be downright childish. When he’d get on something he thought was funny he’d repeat it to the point where it was worn out.”)

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After her visit to Ely, Yvonne and Sigurd wrote to each other frequently, addressing each other with nicknames based on a popular song: Sigurd was “Papa Mia,” and Yvonne was “Vonnie Mia.” They would mark up and exchange articles from magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly and Saturday Review, and would write their thoughts about things they were reading. Sigurd tried to convince Yvonne about the value of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and she tried to persuade him to give T.S. Eliot a chance. They wrote about Jacques Maritain and John Masefield and Ryo Nen, about Thoreau and Goethe. Through Yvonne, Sigurd belatedly discovered that Robert shared his philosophical and cultural interests, and he began opening up intellectually to his son as well. The three even started a joint collection of classical music recordings. (At the time, Sigurd especially enjoyed clarinette quintettes.)

At some point in 1953, possibly during Yvonne’s visit in January, Sigurd talked about his own writing. Yvonne had never read any of his essays, and asked him to show her some. He went into his writing shack, pulled out a few of the essays, and gave them to her. She thought they were wonderful, and told him he should put them into a book.

Coming from another family member or close friend, such a remark might not have had much impact–of course they’re going to praise the work–but Yvonne’s intellectual interests and respect for writing gave her enthusiastic response more weight. Sigurd took it to heart, and during 1953–the year of his father’s death, the year of the FBI raid on the canoe country, the year of Sigurd’s induction as president of the National Parks Association and of his month-long summertime swing through the West, and the year of his first canoe trip with the Voyageurs–he quietly began writing a book manuscript. [To read Sigurd’s related journal entries from this period, click here .] On January 16, 1954, a bitterly cold day that by night would reach nearly forty degrees below zero, leading to a broken furnace, a frozen pipe and a blown stove fuse, Sigurd cheerfully confessed the truth to Yvonne:

Yes I am working on a book and it will be finished sometime in 1954 and I AM NOT COPYING STUFF OUT OF ANOTHER BOOK SEE. I am writing one of my own and next summer if you are here I want you to help me make clean copies of the rough MSS so that we can submit it somewhere in the fall. It is a compilation of essays I have written and now in the light of my mature knowledge (I hope) rather drastically rewritten. I have written some new ones and made a lot of additions to the old ones….I have been working on it steadily since I got home and have some 20 chapters taking shape.

Yvonne Olson arrived in Ely early in May 1954, to spend the summer. (She and Robert were in transition; he was in Minneapolis, looking for a place for them to live and beginning a doctoral program in history at the University of Minnesota.) While a crew of carpenters sawed and hammered away, adding an enclosed porch to the house, Yvonne pounded the typewriter, making fresh copies of Sigurd’s essays.

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By June, the manuscript was far enough along to submit a portion of it. While he was in Washington, D.C. on National Parks Assocation business, Sigurd sought advice from his friend and workplace neighbor, Howard Zahniser [pictured at left]. The balding and bespectacled Wilderness Society executive secretary not only looked bookish, he was bookish. He had a huge personal library of nature books, and rarely seemed to be without one. Ted Swem, a Park Service official and eventual Wilderness Society president who came to know Zahniser early in the 1960s, recalled a time in Denver when he was supposed to pick up Zahniser outside of a downtown hotel. Zahniser was sitting on the sidewalk with his back resting against the hotel wall, and was so immersed in a book that he didn’t notice Swem or look up when Swem honked his car horn. Swem had to drive around the block three times before he caught Zahniser’s attention. Seven years younger than Sigurd and a quiet, gentle, and tremendously effective conservationist, Zahniser was a perfect person for the kind of advice Sigurd needed.

“Have just finished talking to Zahnie about the book,” Sigurd wrote afterward to family members. “He is enthusiastic and thinks it might go big….He thinks it might be best to contact a good agent, because an agent can best decide the question of pre-book publication of chapters and can place them where they will do the most good as a sort of advance publicity stunt.” Zahniser recommended Marie Rodell [shown at right], a widely respected New York agent who, he said, had done great promotional work for scientist/nature writers Rachel Carson and Durwood Allen. On June 10, Olson sent the introduction, four sample chapters, and the table of contents to Rodell. “These essays and sketches…might be the answer for many to the gnawing ennui of today,” he wrote. “If they can bring some joy to those who seem to have lost their capacity to see the world of nature in a fresh, clear light, the book will be justified.” Using words from a poem by Oscar Fay Adams, he called the book “The Pipes of Pan.”

Rodell was interested, but brought up an issue raised by others over the years. “There are some very pleasant passages in this sample material,” she responded on June 16, but she wondered how much of the final version would be lively anecdotes, and how much would contain “straight lyrical appreciation.” She said that Olson’s wilderness adventures would interest readers more than “the more abstract pages of philosophy and feeling.”

But Olson was not about to back down. For twenty years agents and editors had told him there was no market for his essays, but after six years of traveling the country as a professional conservationist, he was convinced they were wrong. Too many people had come up to him after his speeches and told him how much they enjoyed his discussions of the spiritual values of wilderness. By this time Yvonne had typed and retyped all of the essays (she later said she and her father-in-law had some “royal battles” over punctuation) and Sigurd sent the rest of the manuscript to Rodell, saying:

There are many books of adventure and factual accounts of observations in the out of doors. It was not my wish to do another. The value of my book as I see it is in my interpretation of the wilderness, its meaning, and my reactions to it….You may not agree with me at all but I feel very strongly about this.

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Rodell read the rest of Olson’s manuscript, and on July 13, 1954 said she wanted to try to sell it. “I’m not at all certain of the sort of reception it will get,” she wrote, “since the essay type of writing is not too popular these days; but let’s try and see what we can do.”

Later in Olson’s life, the myth would develop–a myth he encouraged–that his manuscript was rejected by eight, even ten publishers. His own papers and Rodell’s files document just three, and the timing is such that other undocumented rejections seem extremely unlikely. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful. Dodd, Mead said little in its rejection, the first of the three. George Brockway, however, writing for W.W. Norton & Co. on October 29, 1954, called the book “too diffuse, too self-conscious, and too sentimental.” And Paul Brooks, an editor at Houghton Mifflin, wrote a rejection letter to Rodell on November 23 that was difficult for both him and Sigurd, because they were friends:

Of course I’m wholly sympathetic with the philosophy expressed in [the essays]–and sometimes he expresses it very well. However, as I told him, there is nothing tougher to sell than essays collected in book form….It would have to be superbly written to have a chance, and Sig Olson’s prose is not on that level….Sig is a wonderful man and I hope to see more of him. But we’d all be disappointed if we tried to publish this.

Rodell forwarded Brooks’ letter to Olson, who had just returned to Ely from New York, Alfred A. Knopfwhere he had played a key role in the conference that re-united conservationists in their strategy to fight the proposed Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument. But the sting of the new rejection was lessened somewhat by a letter Olson had just received from Alfred Knopf. The prestigious publisher and conservationist–he was a member of the National Park Service’s advisory board–told Olson he had attended Sigurd’s keynote speech at the New York conference, and was greatly impressed. “I am wondering if you are not going to have a book for us one of these days?” Knopf wrote. Olson wrote to Rodell on November 29, enclosing Knopf’s letter and asking if she was getting pessimistic about the book’s chances. “If you are, I don’t blame you,” he wrote. “Perhaps Alfred Knopf will in a moment of weakness decide to take a gambling chance.”

He did. “I don’t know how much success we will have with such a book,” Knopf wrote to Olson on January 6, 1955, “but I am happy to have it on our list.” Rodell worked out the contract details. Knopf wanted Olson to change the title and accomanying “pipes of pan” theme in the introduction, to regroup the essays in a more cohesive fashion (such as by season), and to write half a dozen or so additional essays. He agreed with Olson’s request to use Francis Lee Jaques as the book’s illustrator, but the cost for the black-and-white sketches–which would receive praise in the years ahead–was to come out of Olson’s royalties. Rodell later convinced the publisher to split the illustration costs after–and if–the book sold eight thousand copies in the United States.

Sigurd set to work in his writing shack, sketching out new essays. He had liked the “pipes of pan” theme; the metaphor of music and wilderness strongly resonated with him. In fact, his original title choice in 1952 was “Wilderness Music.” Perhaps his decision to use the metaphor as a theme for his first book arose from his reading of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, which he had received as a gift in 1950. In the essay, “Song of the Gavilan,” Leopold wrote, “This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills….a vast pulsing harmony–its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.”

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Then again, the idea could have arisen from an essay called “Wilderness Symphony,” which Olson edited for the Summer 1951 issue of North Country. We may never know for sure, but that essay, by Sigurd’s friend Sam Campbell [shown at right], must have stirred Olson: “Who can write the symphony of the wilderness?” Cambell began. “What master can catch that elusive melody to whose rhythm all nature moves? Who can gather into notes and measures the song of the forest, the cyclic tides of verdure, the dance of the hills and mountains, the metric march of the seasons?” [For more on Sam Campbell, go to samcampbell.com.] Olson had long believed he was that person, and in 1952, as he began thinking seriously about writing a book, his journal entries once again raised the theme of his uniqueness. On July 6, for example, he wrote, “You have something different–no one in your acquaintance feels as you do–no one at all.” And on October 25, he said, “You are a poet. That is where your power lies….You are emerging as a poet of the out-of-doors.”

By early February, 1955, Olson had decided on a new way to express the metaphor of wilderness music that would please Alfred Knopf. The idea came from Jean Packard, a good friend whose husband, Fred, served as executive secretary of the National Parks Association. She told Sigurd of a book about John James Audubon that had been written by nature writer Donald Culross Peattie. Published in 1935, it was called Singing in the Wilderness. Olson liked the title so much he decided to use a variation of it for his own manuscript. On February 7, he sat down at the desk in his writing shack, put a sheet of canary yellow paper in his manual Royal typewriter, and began a new introduction: “The Singing Wilderness has to do with perspective, a certain element of timelessness, and the need for tranquility. It is an open challenge to mechanization, to unlimited industrial expansion and the striving for material things.” The introduction would go through a number of rewrites before he was happy with it, but he had found his metaphor and his new title: The Singing Wilderness.

Olson soon began writing new essays for the book, typing them out on legal-sized, lined yellow paper. He quickly wrote drafts of such essays as “Loons of Lac La Croix” and “The Last Mallard,” “Birds of the Ski Trails” and “Scrub Oak.” But he did not write free of distraction. Minnesota conservationists were campaigning to get Governor Orville Freeman to name Olson as the state’s conservation commissioner, and Freeman was interested. On January 6 the Minneapolis Tribune listed Olson as one of four contenders. Sigurd was gratified by the attention. “In fact after some of the brutal criticism that came my way during the Air Ban fight, it warms the cockles of my heart,” he wrote to a friend. And it would be incorrect to say he had no interest. He told another friend he would have liked to have been able to at least consider it. But he knew he had far too many other things to do, and told those who were leading the campaign on his behalf that he could not accept the position if it were offered.

One of the chapters for The Singing Wilderness added an ironic epilogue to this distraction from his writing. When Marie Rodell had sent the book manuscript to publishers in 1954, she also had sent individual chapters to magazines, and Sports Illustrated had bought two of them. One, called “Dark House,” the magazine renamed “Fishing at 20 Below,” and published on February 28, 1955. The article was not about ordinary ice fishing; Olson wrote about spearing, which had long been controversial among Minnesota sportsmen. Those in the northern part of the state typically had supported it; those in the southern counties often had vigorously opposed it. Within the state division of the Izaak Walton League the issue had created such dissension in the late 1940s that the northern chapters had threatened to secede.

A number of biologists in the Minnesota Conservation Department opposed spearing, saying that northern pike would disappear from the state if the practice continued. After the Sports Illustrated article appeared, state Izaak Walton League President George Laing wrote to Olson that his article had resurrected old wounds, and that Twin Cities outdoor writers “have actually pointed to your article as evidence of your disinterest in the state’s complete conservation program.” To such critics, “Fishing at 20 Below” demonstrated that Olson was unfit for the job of conservation commissioner.

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Sigurd responded on March 24 that he simply hadn’t thought about the potential reaction when he submitted the article: “I guess the fact of the matter is that I have become so embroiled in controversial problems all over the country that I had forgotten how it might affect the Minnesota issue.” He said he was willing to “accept the opinions of those who know the score,” the researchers who believed spearing must end to save the northern pike.

It was a minor storm that quickly passed, but it is surprising that Olson, the Izaak Walton League’s wilderness ecologist and active in the organization since its inception three decades earlier, would be so unaware of an issue that deeply divided the league in his own state. Perhaps the outdoor writers that Laing referred to were correct, if by “disinterested” they meant that Olson had become so involved in conservation at a national level that he was losing touch with state issues. His response to Laing gives some support to such a charge.

Another possibility–and it would not necessarily preclude the above–is that Olson tended to separate his creative desires as a writer and interpreter of outdoor experiences from the political aspects of the conservation world. In his March 24 letter to Laing, Sigurd wrote that he didn’t write the essay to give support to spearing: “I wrote this little piece some years ago as a pure interpretation of the feelings of a man when he sits in a dark house and looks down through a hole in the ice waiting for something to come along. I still think it is a wonderful experience….And so I make no apologies for the way I feel about it and the joys I tried to point up in my story.”

The controversy did not keep Olson from using the essay in The Singing Wilderness under its original title, “Dark House.” He made but one significant change in the story: in the first sentence, he changed the timing of the episode from “two years ago” to “ten years ago,” undoubtedly to distance himself somewhat from charges of supporting the practice in the mid-1950s.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1955 Sigurd continued working on the book as much as possible, while keeping up with his conservation duties. He also made time for his first canoe expedition into the far north, the publicity-generating Voyageurs trip along five hundred miles of the Churchill River in Saskatchewan. [For more on that expedition, click here.] It fulfilled a dream Olson had kept since 1921, when Al Kennedy had asked him to go prospect for gold in the Flin Flon, and Sigurd had said no to keep from losing Elizabeth. He thought about that on July 23, after the group made its first camp on a sand point along the northern reaches of Lac Ile a la Crosse. He wrote in his “Thistle Irish Linen” notebook, “Here at last I am in the North Country, where I wanted to go thirty years ago. It is good to have seen it–good at last to have part of it under my belt.”

Returning from the north in mid-August, Olson finished his manuscript and sent it to his editor. The final draft contained thirty-four essays, organized by seasons. At least nineteen of the essays were rewrites of pieces dating back ten years or more, many of them rejected by magazines. Three of them–“Easter on the Prairie,” “Grandmother’s Trout,” and “Farewell to Saganaga”–had their origins in the 1930s, and shared a total of eighteen rejections. But whatever Alfred Knopf’s original reservations were, he took a personal interest in the book, and on February 13, 1956, after reading the final draft, he wrote to Sigurd, “I think you have done a fine job.”

In 1952, Sigurd began to seriously think again about an idea he had conceived in the 1930s: to write a book of nature essays. Sigurd wouldn’t actually begin solid work on the book until 1953, but these journal entries below are the earliest ones in which he discusses the project that eventually became his first book, The Singing Wilderness. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

July 6, 1952 

Idea for the book

It suddenly came to me last night that what I might write is a description of the sort of enjoyment all of us get: the joy in the moonlight between the islands, the flickering of the northern lights, the smooth dip and flow of the canoe beating before the waves, the smell of cedar, the sharp sweet smell of Sweet Gale as it was bruised by the canoe, “a thousand million open pores spilling out the fragrance.”

All of these things are part of the old idea of writing on outdoor enjoyment and interpretation—only now you are older—the stuff will not be cloying—this is real and important and maybe the contribution you have toyed with over the years.

The million joys we have—picking of cranberries in the bog, blueberries—trout fishing, sparkling snow, music at sunset, meals before the fire, sunrises and Thoreau and the look of rocks—gold finches, ducks against the sunset, the sound of bluebills, mallards quacking in the rice.

What you are trying to say is that if you can bring these things out in a book preferably you may have something. You have something different—no one in your acquaintance feels as you do—no one at all. If you can get this love and joy, this wonder and enthusiasm down on paper you will have it. Your job this summer is to try and write a chapter of the book. If you can get started then all problems will iron out.

The reason it looks good to me now is that the above thoughts are merely elaborations of the old theme, which makes it seem as though the old theme has merit.

You could call it—Keys to a Countryside—How to Enjoy the Out of Doors—Secrets of Enjoyment—Wilderness Fun [“The Search,” he added in pen.]

What is the matter with fun—the many ways to enjoy the out of doors—clean campsites—vistas, berry picking, rocks and birds—hunting and fishing—the little cabin. The title “Wilderness Fun” can be elaborated a thousand ways. Write the introduction first and then go on with a hundred different chapters, telling why and how you and others have found the secret to enjoyment. What makes you different is exactly your capacity to enjoy. What has always made you different from your partners, exactly that. “Smell the morning” a ritual to start the day—bringing in all the smells that you know—balsam, bay—wet sand.

Sounds—bird songs, waves—wind through the trees—

WF can be happy and gay and give others a real sense of enjoyment—no preaching here but a joyous account of such things as last night the moonlight trip to the island. You can bring in the feelings of oneness, of peace, of accord and amity, of God, of universality. But in this it must be easily done, never forced. Perhaps another book. Wilder. Peace as you thought of long ago.

August 8, 1952

There is only one hope and that is to get at my writing again. These old signs of depression and loss of hope are familiar. They have happened many times in the past. As soon as I get at my writing, anything at all, it will pass just as it has before. Money troubles, investments, complications, QS [Quetico-Superior wilderness issues] do not seem important compared to the joy of again pounding something off.

That is your one anchor to windward as it has always been, that will make all worthwhile. Sure you have done nothing but talk about it, but the truth is there just the same. Regular periods of writing, regular output/ That is all that counts.

What will it be – as much of a puzzle as ever but there are glimmerings. Last night reading Time, under “Religion” a French priest says in America there is no close feeling for the land – in short no at homeness – no communion. He meant that in Europe where people have lived a long time, there is this feeling of oneness and understanding. Here we are still tourists.

It is much the same as I have been thinking about that what I must put across is the feeling of oness ala Thoreau. Sig’s [Sigurd Jr.] feeling and mine for the canoe country. If I can bring into my writing this feeling of communion at homeness or whatever you want to call it then I have done something. As you indicated in Wilderness Peace, if you can bring in the feeling of oneness of all life, of oneness with the Universe, of total understanding and sympathy – if you can impregnate your writings with that major premise then you have something. If people reading it can catch that then it is enough – then everything you write will have a solid core of worthwhileness.

Your book Wilderness Fun – might conceivably work into that – Sounds, smells – colors – etc etc – back to the old idea of interpretation – plus the more mature feeling that you now have, the more mature understanding.

August 11, 1952

A short newspaper clipping, which Sigurd attached to the looseleaf page on which he typed his journal entry, is what prompted him to write. Below I have first put the text of the newspaper clipping, and then Sigurd’s journal entry.

The Mystery
by Lee Hastings Bristol, Jr.

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
—William Blake

With daily reports of international discord, scandal in government; with all the tense faces of people along the street; with the world picture always so black—what a “lift” we get from words like these! Here is a call to a sense of mystery. Here is a reminder that beyond our world of telephones, sleeping pills and Korean war news lies more, much more, for us to know.

“According to the laws of aerodynamics,” declares Austin Pardue, “the experts maintain that the bumblebee cannot fly. His wingspread is too short for his fuselage. But the bumblebee does fly. He has not learned his aerodynamics.”

When we say over morning coffee cups that we “know it all,” when we kiddingly tell ourselves that we can put the whole world into a formula of two plus two equals four, perhaps thoughts of a bumblebee, a grain of sand, a flower, and the white radiance of eternity give us pause.

Was the poet not right, after all, to suggest that “…behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own”?

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Sigurd highlighted the quote from William Blake, a quote he eventually typed up and posted in his writing shack. Then he wrote the following journal entry:

To catch perhaps the joy that we all have in natural things in sunsets in the opening of a flower in running water, the wind in the pines, a thousand things. The joy that makes life thrilling and away from the prosaic. To capture that and bring it into your writings, eternity in a grain of sand, the story of rocks and swamps and trees—that is the sort of thing that if you can bring it into your writing will make it worth while for everyone.

Attached herewith a clipping which points up just this. Compared to the natural wonders all other things are unimportant.

Keep this in mind when you start as well as that sense of oneness and communion Father Breckberger of France talked about when he said Americans are not as yet wedded to their earth—they cannot as yet take their pleasure with her, cannot feel that sense of oneness that perhaps Sig [Sigurd and Elizabeth’s oldest son] and I have for the out of doors.

America is footloose and unattached. We must try to capture that feeling of at onehomes ness [sic] to dispel the sensation that towns are refugees from the wild. We are part of it now. Until we capture that we are still a people without roots.

September 16, 1952

Whenever I feel low, whenever I get the feeling of not accomplishing anything, of being in a stalemate one thought is always encouraging – the old dream of someday getting at my writing. Anything just so that I am producing something. Guess what I must do now is get started on something at once, right today and see what the effect will be. It doesn’t make much difference just so that words are going down and thoughts. You have neglected writing. You know the formula. Get at something and watch your enthusiasm and good nature return.

What – get to work on Wilderness Fun. Even that might develop into something worthwhile.

Get to work on Wilderness Peace and see what happens. Dig out some of your old stuff and revise it. Get to work on something. Have something maturing and developing all of the time. Work tonight, be sketching out ideas as you travel. Keep this spark alive and forget the many petty annoyances which seem to take the joy out of life.

You know the answers – why postpone the inevitable. The formula is so simple. But you are getting rusty, out of practice, out of touch.

October 11, 1952

Why not make use of the many things you have written. You have enough material for a book right now if it is organized and put in some sort of a sequence, have some sort of thread running through it. Through all of your stuff is the search for the primitive the joy in simple things the fight against convention. Bring through it all too your feeling of the simple, the love of God, communion with all things, make that the lifeline. Such a collection of essays might be all right if there is that line running through them, some coordinating influence through which you can pour all of your knowledge and all of your feelings.

Work up the Trappers Cabin idea for the first. Then follow with Why Wilderness.

I have just finished the Snowbank Cabin about 1000 words and have brought out the sense of naturalness, oneness with environment and animals, the harking back to the aeons of living in primitive shelters, the need for renewing old earth associations, or returning to the ancient awarenesses.

The next one will also be a trial – Perhaps The Search.

December 1, 1952

I have called this book “The Search” because that is exactly what it is, a lifetime spent in trying to find the answers to my particular type of longing, the longing for the wild, for naturalness, for cleanness, and beauty. The search has gone on for half a century, is still going on but I am beginning to find some of the answers. In short, in the words of Thoreau:

“I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken to concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard the hound and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.”

It is the same type of search that I have been going through most of my life, the same type that many people go through much of their lives. It is the recognition of these moments, these episodes, that make the search worthwhile. Now looking back over half a century these moments stand out. I find I have forgotten the times when I found nothing, that the highlights stand out. It is impossible to record them all but I shall attempt to set down in this volume the moments that really count.

What is the matter of this search. How recognize the gain when it does come. It is necessary to know what one is looking for in order to find it.

The first impressions of childhood are still vivid but are important only insofar as they have contributed to the goal. As a child there was of course no recognition but now with maturer insight, I look back and find that even then there was something of the search going on.

In the hope that others who have been aware of unrest and futility will find in the reading of the record of my search I have written this little book.

What am I going to find – peace – silence, beauty, the wild, cleanness, smells, sounds, but mostly the primitive, why because the primitive is the embodiment of what we as a race have lost. [Note: Olson always uses the word “race” in the sense of “human race.”] It is this search for something lost that keeps us going, the finding of bits of it that makes the search worthwhile.

“Something lost behind the ranges, something lost and waiting for you.” Kipling.

These are excerpts from several journal entries Sigurd wrote during 1953 and January 1954 as he worked on his book manuscript. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

Undated, 1953

Random thoughts on the book

Bring in all you have read and studied and thought about: Thoreau, Burroughs, and all the rest. It is your mature judgment now, your contribution that counts. Each chapter can be a magazine article. You may give titles that are able to tie in to an idea, such as Stone Wall for your chapter on the earth or geology, Wilderness Cabin for houses and tents, Northern Lights for wonder.

Try one chapter soon and see what form it will take. It could be a straight essay type of thing. Write for the common man, not highbrow stuff, the sort of thing that will be read, that you might read and keep.

Chapters should be about 1500 – 2000 words – 25 chapters would then run into a book of 50,000 words. There must be continuity throughout.

Start with ordinary things, what kind of a book would you want to read. A man’s telling what he believes is always acceptable. Steward Edw White was a loss to me. I would want to hear what Einstein would say.

Begin at once, working your outlines, your approach will crystallize.

Undated, 1953

This book may be the answer if I do not stray and make it a book on the woods as such. It must be spiritual, have more information, must be the reaction of a man to the real meaning of wilderness.

Therefore such a chapter as Silence might be the key and set the tone. Work up such a chapter and see how it comes out – each chapter must be 2000 to 3000 words long – an essay type however different because of its spiritual appeal. This chapter might be the answer to all of your searching. If you can do one beautiful chapter, making it the sort of thing that all would like to read, beautifully written, beautiful descriptions but more than those real feeling, real intuition, real contribution, then you might have something.

Silence – start out with a paddle at night – Izaak Walton’s Study to be Quiet – the quiet center – coming out of a cabin on Basswood, standing there breathless alone and in absolute quiet.

You should not have to quote, although it would help. But it would take an awful lot of study. If you don’t quote, then it is all your own and that is what counts. This will be hard work, the hardest thing you have ever done, it will take prayer and thought. Perhaps this is what you have lived for all of these years. Perhaps this is the sort of thing you can do indefinitely, once you begin. This will challenge all you have, every bit of brains and insight and idealism you possess. This is the most important thing you’ve ever tried. This is the answer.

January 4, 1954

Sigurd wrote the following after re-reading one of his favorite books, W.H. Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago.

How does all this affect my writing? Simply in this way that what Hudson had I have, the sense of mystery, of animism. It was as vivid in me as in him, note Northwest Corner, Sister Bay, a thousand other instances, surviving in me in spite of all distractions. This sense of mystery, of close communion with all of nature, this sense of seeing more than appears at the surface, this continuance of the sense of wonder and awe, this delight in all natural phenomena is perhaps the most precious thing you have.

If you can incorporate into each of your essays and make it the continuing thread of all your writing, the thing to look for, then you need not be concerned about purpose. These chapters then are part of a whole, the unveiling of this sense of animism as seen through a mature mind.

In The Cabin you find it in the feeling of oneness with the trees, the white footed mouse, the squirrel, in all of the natural little shelters. More than description they give this feeling.

In Fish House, you become one with the waving fronds of eel grass in the water, the sense of being a part of the aquatic scene.

In Moon Magic it is the all response to Moonlight, the joy and exhuberance of all living things in the light of the full moon, not just the play habits of animals but the other.

In Forest Pool the sense of the pool being a part of the primeval picture.

The Spring Hole – again a primitive picture, perfection, untouched, America as it was, the sense of being part of it.

Smell of the Morning – the delight of smells, primitive smells, the wonder the awe the associations, clean natural earthy things.

Northern Lights – stroke stroke stroke – the sense of mystery and beauty again, the old animism.

Pine Knots part of the sunshine of hundreds of years ago, gazing into a fire, primeval pictures when the world was young.

Skyline Trail – the sense of the vastness of wilderness, of part of the glacial river the esker, part of the great spruce swamp – the contrast with people in the town who did not know.

Flying In – Again being a part of the terrain, part of the muskeg the water the portages, the wind and rain.

All of these things show the delight, the sense of oneness, the animism that most people have lost. They can find it in all of these things in different ways. I must write with that one object in view to give my work continuity.

Wilderness Music – Somewhere Hudson says, scientific expeditions go in to study native tribes to find this thing they have lost. All animals have it, some humans close to the earth.

Sigurd began working on the book that became The Singing Wilderness in 1953, writing new essays and reworking others that he had written as far back as the 1930s. He didn’t tell anyone about it until January 16, 1954, when he wrote about it to his son Bob and daughter-in-law Yvonne. Vonnie, as she was called, was a strong source of encouragement for Sigurd to try writing a book. Around early February she offered a critique of some of his essays. Excerpts from Sigurd’s letter to Bob and Vonnie appear below, followed by Sig’s own notes recalling Vonnie’s comments on his essays. To see these documents in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

We are in receipt of your valued missile of current date and are taking this opportunity to return same. Soooo we are the rascals who don’t love their families, we are the ones who can’t take a stolen minute to keep our flesh and blood informed of our whereabouts, so we are the bbbbb what was I going to say except that we still love you and are sorry.

But it isn’t true, we have written you every day almost and the post office is threatening to become 1st class if we don’t stop, or do we just dream about you and do nothing. Could that be. We have your letter of the 14th Vonnie Mia Adorable Darhling and I shall answer your questions while it is still before me trembling and warm and only two days from Frisco.

1. I am glad that our life up here sounds boring and that you want to be where there is LIFE, LIFE, LIFE IN BIG CITIES and such places. That settles that little dream of quiet and peace and music and simple living. I always did think it was sort of far fetched with dreams of cabins way back in the woods where all was quiet and you could hear chickadees and the trees creak with the temperature down to 40 below and there were strange animals with kegs around their necks. Well that’s good, no more worry about that. It’s finished, zero.

2. Yes I am working on a book and it will be finished sometime in 1954 and I AM NOT COPYING STUFF OUT OF ANOTHER BOOK SEE. I am writing one of my own and next summer if you are here I want you to help me make clean a perfect copy of the rough MSS so that we can submit it somewhere in the fall. It is a compilation of essays I have written and now in the light of my mature knowledge (I hope) rather drastically rewritten. I have written some new ones and made a lot of additions to the old ones. I may call it Wilderness Music or possible No Greener Pastures (from Thoreau). I have been working on it steadily since I got home and have some 20 chapters taking shape. How I would love to crawl into some out of the way place with a few months with nothing to do but work on it. That would really be fun. But is it a date that you will help me Vonnie when you get home….

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VMD Comments on Pipes of Pan

Silence is such a beautiful thing. Really I think it is the loveliest you have done. And as far as I’m concerned it is about done. I think much more work would spoil it. What a beautiful mood you caught. Those first two paragraphs are incomparable.

Belonging will take more work, the idea I love but it must be expanded and will take more thinking. You are saying the same thing over and over again. But it won’t be hard to do for you have the basic idea. It will be just a matter of working it over.

Check line in Northern Lights “I have skied along the rim of the world and have seen such things as the dwellers in town have never dreamed about.” You cannot say that. The “dwellers in town” may feel that they too can know beauty.

Also “could all but hear the crackle of the Northern Lights.”

The paragraph in Silence is really lovely and I see you were in the mood. You still have not lost your touch and your feeling. I am sure you will be able to do a beautiful book.

The more I read the essays the more I like them. I mean they are one of those things that become closer and closer to you as you get to know them. As I was typing yesterday I was so happy with them. They get familiar, yet there is something in them that renews the feeling each time they are read. I love them.

I love The Canoe – that is a beautiful thing. I like the personification you use. I like to use it too.

To be brutal, I do not like Saganaga — my notes – “confused unduly dramatic, immature.” You are not and never have been I think as confused as this sounds. It doesn’t sound like you and it most certainly does not match the mood of the rest.

[Sigurd reflecting:] Discuss Saganaga and Northern Lights and work on Belonging. As to Sag I wonder if she is right – immaturity, perhaps, it was written in rough long ago.

In February 1954 Sigurd was hard at work on the book that became The Singing Wilderness. He occasionally jotted down ideas and goals in loose-leaf journal entries, some dated and some undated. The selection reproduced here shows in particular the inspiration he took from a book called So Long to Learn, by John Masefield, as well as an article from Saturday Review about the poets Kathleen Raine and Theodore Roethke. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

February 2, 1954

What I must keep always before me is the objectives in my writing. This seems to be the only sort of thing I can do with heat and enthusiasm. The old ideal hasn’t changed and as far as I can see never will. This is my forter and what will give it purpose is a clear conception of objectives. Every piece must somehow accomplish them. If it does not it is not worthwhile.

What are they?

1. The search of Thoreau
2. Re-establish contact with simple things and the earth.
3. Being a part of the whole – oneness, universality.
4. Mystery and wonder – Masefield – Hudson –
5. A glimpse of The Glory –
6. The primeval –
7. To go forward it is necessary to go backward.
8. Runic quality – strange relationships with man and earth and life
9. Contact with that greater life – Masefield, source of all glory, goodness, beauty, wisdom and rightness.
10. To bring down from this greater life, something shining for man – Masefield – somehow each essay must tap the source
11. Awareness of one’s surroundings – look at each day as tho it were the last. In these essays each one must be so vivid as tho it were the last of my experiences.
12. The clean, the unsullied, unchanged scene, perfection and beauty.
13. The sense of partnership with mother earth – not a chattel or ownership

If you can catch in each one, not all and not by mentioning them, some of this feeling so that unconsciously there is this sense of the glory then you have done what you set out to do. Never write a word that does not have this reason behind it. Make it as unconsciously included as breathing.

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Undated, February 1954

Suggestion for the Book

It is not enough to recount the things you have seen or experienced. There must be something more, something of your own best thinking, something that will contribute a thought or two in everything you write. This is the continuity you need.

In Spring Fever – there is more than just going out looking for spring. What does it mean to you, what about the rejuvenation of mind and body, the inherent urges, the looking for naturalness and the wonder of simple things in the spawning, the golden galleons, the drummer and the flowers, the squirrel and the cat. Unless you somehow get that in constantly your stuff will be worthless.

In Wild Goose there is the wild music of the flyways the idea that you cannot capture it by killing a goose, the inherent thrill of the music. You might bring in here the observation of Asa Koff the Russion on Aseph and the migrant curlew.

In Stone Wall the feeling of oneness with stones the feeling they give you of permanence and the places you have been.

Timber Wolves the primitive fear of the wolves – bring in some ideas on ecology, the balance.

Dead Man’s Creek the wonder and joy of a boy on the trout stream his love of the creek and the one who understood him.

Coming of the Snow – the sense of transition, the change in the lives of all things including man.

Farewell to Saganaga – the feeling of a man for the primitive picture, his sorrow at its loss, the resignation and perspective.

In each of the things you write you must bring this in. Somehow it comes in almost automatically to me, but perhaps you must be more obvious more profound.

Possibly 35 essays will be enough, averaging 1500 words, 35 will total 50,000 words. With illustrations, it will make a book the size of Sand County Almanac. The ideal thing will be to make it a picture for every chapter. I shall have 25 in shape before I leave that will leave 10 to do during the year. 1954 should see the completion of this my first volume. I can call it “WILDERNESS MUSIC” or “THE SEARCH” or “WILDERNESS MAGIC”

One thing you know is that you might as well make use of all you have written, the essays of the past on which you have done so much work. The thoughts are all there and the memories. They are grist in the mill. After this first can come a succession of books, all of them essays, all of them recording what I’ve seen and done. These will be my contribution. They are all I can do. The first must be a masterpiece. No effort is too great.

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Timber Wolves – again gives that sense of the old, of being part of the ancient scene, the joy in even a desperate winter adventure, the awareness of being alive, the sort of thing Masefield talks about.

The Way of A Canoe – sense of oneness. There is some of the glory.

Easter on the Prairie – the glory of the open plains the awareness of its beauty the contrasts

Spring Fever – Again the glory in the coming of spring, the feel of it, the sense of awakening and joy.

Birthday on the Manitou – the feeling of the old man for the river his recapturing the past, his oneness with the old river. He had found the glory there in the big pool.

In revising the 1st page of Easter on the Prairie I realized that what I want to do is portray my feelings so that others will catch what I catch. On the prairie those sensations are different. Somehow this is what urges me on to do these things. I feel I must record how I feel, that my feelings are different and worth recording. I am an instrument and what I feel regarding countless things is grist in the mill. These sensations are important to me. Write at white heat says Burroughts, write for yourself, be full of what you want to say. Want to say it more than anythig else in the world.

Sat. Review – Logic of the North discussing poems of Kathleen Raine and Theo Roethke – it says the following – “sometimes one gets the feeling that not even the animals have been there before; but the marsh and the mire, the Void, is always there terrifying. It is a splending place for schooling the spirit.” Roethke has the feeling I have evidently of the primeval, something I can bear in mind as background for my own stuff.

“Some of these pieces began in the moor; as if man is no more than a shape writing from the old rock.”

And of Raine – “The Scottish border country has a certain bleak impressiveness that its loneliness seems to enhance. She is conscious of her roots in the soil – a kind of deep northness. I noted her admitted kindship with Blake and called her a dealer in eternity and the vision which lies just beyond the world of appearances.” When she acknowledges the forms of this world and her senses are finely attuned, she goes at once to the elements – this world seems much cloer in the northern lands – sometimes deals with something similar to the Ode of intim. of immortality of Wordsworth – a former existence – a call to go back to the roots of life in a natural world – the north country seems to be enahanced by its very aloneliness – a certain runic quality – source material for imagery which invests them with a cumulative effect. Roethke – “I believe that to go forward as a spiritual man it is necessary to go backward” – he leans on intuition atavism, by making greater demands on the subconscious he comes up with strange evidence of relationships between man and nature. “I’ve traced these words in sand with a vestigial tail” – he has derived much joy from his newly discovered closeness to the rest of the earths creatures.

All of this is worth mulling over, the sort of thing that will go into “The Search” and the hunt for continuity and meaning in every one of the things I do. “Dealer in eternity – a runic quality – call to go back to the roots of life – enhanced by loneliness – to go forward a man must go backward – a childlike quality – evidence of strange relationships – the Void a place for the schooling of the spirit. This sort of ties in with Hudson. This is what I should catch in my own.

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The idea of Pipes of Pan – gives substance to my writing. All through my work is the question “Where are the Pipes of Pan?” That is part of the search, in fact is the search, the listening for The Pipes, the finding them in a thousand places and hearing them is compensation enough. Children hear them, we hear them occasionally, Jack Linklater heard them as in Wilderness Music.

The listening the waiting, the searching all for the chance of hearing just a strain. You might entitle the lead “The Pipes of Pan” and then go on from there. That would set the tone. Quote the full verse, quote also “Rather hear the tritons horn – Good God, I’d rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn” etc. That is part of the idea. Play it up through your stuff, all to do with the Pipes of Pan.

John Masefield – “Then on one wonderful day when I was little more than five years old, as I stood looking north, over a clump of honeysuckle in flower, I entered into that greater life; and that life entered into me with a delight that I can never forget. I found suddenly that I could imagine imaginary beings complete in every detail, with every faculty and possession and that these imaginations did what I wished for my delight, with an incredible perfection, in a brightness not of this world.

“I believe that life to be the source of all that is of glory or goodness in this world; and that modern man, not knowing that life, is dwelling in death.”

“This brings me to the important thing in all arts, the breaking of the tomb, the resurrection of the dead, known as the coming of inspiration. What is this illumination that adds so much to human happiness?”

“The subject comes or it sticks, one or the other; and that is that. This illumination is an intense experience and so wonderful that it cannot be described. While it lasts the momentary problem is merged into a dasslingly clear perception of the entire work in its detail. In a mood of mental ecstasy the writer perceives what seems to be an unchangeable way of statement, so ful, and so insistent that he cannot set down half of what there is to utter. The mood may last for some hours or weeks; it goes as strangely and suddenly as it comes, having in its passing revealed something that will be more sure to please and illumine others than work done in moods less glowing.

“One or two writers have called it the individual’s realization of his Higher Being. Two or three others have felt that it is the perception by a mortal of undying reality to which all mortals have access by effort and from which all beauty, good, wisdom, and rightness forever come to man. I cannot doubt that this universe of glory and energy exists and that man in some strange ways enter into it or partake of its nature. We have been through other periods of swaggery and imbecility. The wonder to myself is that the source should be so splendid, so infinite, so full of blessing that annihilates all evil.

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“May not every seeker after beauty and order touch the order and beauty of the universe of which the sun, our own source of life is one of the lesser powers? With decent shelter and enough food, neither very hard to win, the effort to create beauty, in praise of undying beauty, must bring gladness here and perhaps leave joy to future times.”

From “So Long to Learn”

Masefield gives a clue to what I am trying to do.

In the following her really tells what a man must do. “Fewer and fewer men are taking the discipline of the arts as qualifications for the attempt to know that glory and TO BRING FROM IT SOMETHING SHINING FOR MAN.”

In the essays I am working on, each one must bring through it something shining for man. Each must tap somehow, enable me to touch that “greater life” the source of all glory beauty goodness in this world. In short if I can in some way touch this order then I will be accomplishing my purpose.

If each thing I write will somehow have this illumination, this glow, this transcendent beauty, the feeling of having touched the absolute, it will be enough. I can do this by bringing in somehow my feeling for the primeval, the origins of things, the Pipes of Pan, the glory, the sense of wonder, awe, oneness with all life and the universe itself, the childlike quality soon lost of being part of that greater life.

In February 1954 Sigurd was hard at work on the book that became The Singing Wilderness. He occasionally jotted down ideas and goals in loose-leaf journal entries, some dated and some undated. The selection reproduced here shows his focus on the overall theme, as well as his concern for such details as how long a typical essay should be, and how many he should include. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

Undated, February 1954

The Book

Upon re-reading John Cowper Powys book “The Meaning of Culture”

If I can incorporate in my book what he is driving at that the real culture is in awareness of one’s surroundings, looking at each day as though it were the last, building up memories as a background for present happiness and enjoyment, books, music, the scenes around us, the thousands of little things that make life rich, if I can do this without talking about culture but in writing so that others can capture the meaning of it, then your work will be a real contribution.

Happiness says Powys is exaltation in a sense, a continual weaving together of past sensations with the present, a feeling of oness with one’s environment and the universe. When one has that he has a bulwark against worry and frustration, against the millions of things which make life dull and uninteresting.

In short if you can do this through the medium of writing about the out of doors, the Quetico-Superior country, anything you choose, if you can weave into everything you do the feeling that today is the day of all days, that there is joy in every impression, every blade of grass and flowing bit of water, then you have accomplished what you set out to do.

You can call it the Search if you wish, but it is more than the search for the primitive, it is the search for peace of mind as found in the beauty and unsullied scenes of the wild. It is the deep happiness and contentment that comes from realizing that this is the most beautiful of worlds. Powys distinguishes between pleasure and happiness. There is a vast difference – most people pursue happiness but miss it in the matter of pleasures of the moment, action of any kind. They miss contentment for real happiness comes only from one’s awareness of consciousness of one’s world built upon a myriad of number of sensations from the past.

Undated, February 1954

Length – THE PIPES OF PAN

In checking the length of a number of books I have found the following:

Minstrel Weather has 17 essays that run 1000 words each with an illustration for each one, run chronological order as far as seasons are concerned. Total 17,000 words of script.

Full Creel – runs 23 chapters all on fishing of approximately 1800 to 2000 words each, total 46,000 words with a half page illus for each chapter heading.

Canoe Country runs – 78 pages, half of them full or half page illus by Lee [he is referring to Francis Lee Jaques, his friend who also would become the illustrator for The Singing Wilderness] with about 300 words to the page big rough type and paper, big margins or about 20,000 words of text perhaps 25,000.

Baker’s book Green Glory, runs about 90 pages or 60 of text at 400 per page, 24,000 words.

Snowshoe Country about the same as Canoe Country.

In other words you do not have to make it 50,000. You have enough right now. Your book has chapters running about 1500 to 2000 words. You plan on 35 which will make it 52,000 which is plenty long.

You had better enlarge the 1000 ones to 1500 or 1800, stick to a medium between 1500 and 2000 which will make according to the Jaques books about six pages of text with one illustration possibly two.

You can run yours chronologically as far as the seasons are concerned.

You have enough now if you want to stop and polish.

Work and rework these chapters and make them so good that this book will set the stage for others, bring calls for speaking, so that you will know that this is it. Make 1954 the year of submission and acceptance.

Under —- Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank the editors and publisher for their kind permission to use certain parts of stories and sketches in this volume, National Parks Magazine, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life. Perhaps however you can disguise that so no ack. will be necessary.

The House at Coates- about 15 chapters – 4-5 pages each of 300 words per page making 1200 to 1500 for each chapter totalling 18,000 words. Leopold’s Round River Drive 170 pages at 400 per page or between 42,000 and 50,000. Coates 4 major divisions with short essays for each one. I could do the same.

Undated, February 1954

Suggestions for the Books

Make two little volumes, one The Pipes of Pan and the other Wilderness Memories – The Pipes of Pan sets a tone that will not carry through in all the essays, therefore it is wise to place all of those which do fit in, in one volume.

In short in working away, you can file each of your things in the proper place. My suggestion now is work on Pipes of Pan and get that ready for submission first or parts of it to the magazines.

The third volume can follow these two and be a continuation of them both or strike a different key.

Undated, February 1954

Suggestions for Pipes of Pan

In reading the Beaver last night coming down on the train I ran across the following from an article on the American Indian:

“The Indian was probably more mature psychologically than the white frontiersman who confronted him. Certainly he was more tolerant. He never doubted that the white man had a soul as well as the buffalo. Enjoying a tranquil sense of oneness with the universe around him, not unlike that expressed in the poems of Wordsworth, he regarded harmony rather than conflict as the law of life, though he was too practical not to train his young warriors to defend themselves. He drew spiritual sustenance, as the isolated whiteman could not, from age old society of his own people, finding deep satisfaction in their religious ritual, their songs, their thanksgiving dances, and their intricate web of social duties. He owned private property, though not real estate, he could never bring himself, even after centuries of contact with white men to look upon his “mother” the earth (from whom he had come and to whome he would return) as a chattel. He was generous and hospitable, sharing his possessions with anyone who needed them and doing it cheerfully although in the act he might seem to be impoverishing himself. He was an individualist who fought well when he had to but by nature was peaceable. The white man’s greatest mistake was his open contempt, his willful insensitivenss to the beauty and spiritual power of many of the Indian’s beliefs.”

From this you can draw strength for your own beliefs and especially the note you want to strike in the book. The Pipes of Pan must have this sense of oness with the earth, the source of all tranquility – the sense of drawing spiritual sustenance from his rituals, songs, dances, the looking upon mother earth not as a chattel, not as something to own and exploit but rather in the true sense of belonging.

Study Wordsworth, catch his sense of oneness – Thoreau the same – have this theme running all the way through. Here is the source of all goodness, all peace. Masefield has it too in the greater life in a sense which really means that he is becoming a part of the universality which the Indians also sensed. All sensitive souls strive for this. The Indians had it and felt it strongly. If you can bring it in, then you have the hard core of belief you want.

February 23, 1954

Note on Pipes of Pan

Your interpretation of Pipes of Pan was too narrow. It is more than the mystical, sense of union and oneness, more than the awe and the sense of wonderment. It is the joy that we all get from doing simple natural things, the joy of movement, the joy in any expedition, picking berries or pine knots, or fishing and hunting. When you listen to the Pipes of Pan you devote yourself to such simple joys. By such devotion you listen to the deeper tones but it is the Pipes just the same.

With this knowledge you can broaden your selection. You must however keep out of it as essays all killing, all essays that do not carry the theme, the thought, the main idea. This rules out the Killers, it rules out The Last Mallard and the Wild Goose. You must remain true to the thought, be consistent all the way through. You cannot vary an iota from the main purpose of your choice.

Have just redone Pine Knots and I think I have captured it there, the joy in finding the knots, simple primitive joy of hunting, finding and burning them, their meaning and interpretation. Have also rewritten Northern Lights – there is definitely The Pipes again. In working over all the rest you can use them all if you adhere to this idea.

February 26, 1954

The Pipes of Pan

Get down to the quick of your mind, say important things. So much of the time you are mouthing words for the sound of them, do not say what you really want to say. Write at white heat get your best thoughts down and into what you are writing about. Without that your materials will have no significance or incidentally importance. Your thoughts are as important as anyone else’s. Do not be apologetic. Get them down. What you feel deeply about, your analysis, your grasp on first principles. Those are the things that count.

Some day you might do an essay on HIGH PLACES using Robinson Peak as a starter and follow through with all the high spots you know.

By May 1954, Sigurd was ready to find an agent to market the book that became The Singing Wilderness. While in Washington, D.C. on National Parks Association business, he visited his friend Howard Zahniser, executive director of the Wilderness Society. Zahniser recommended New York agent Marie Rodell. The letters below start with one from Zahniser giving more details and contact information for Rodell, then Sig’s first letter to Rodell (accompanied by a sample from the manuscript), her response (a scan of the original), and his reply to her. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

Howard Zahniser to Sigurd Olson, May 25, 1954

25 May 1954

Mr. Sigurd F. Olson
Box 157
Ely, Minn.

Dear Sig:

The agent whom I was suggesting to you is Miss Marie S. Rodell, whose address is 542 Fifth Avenue, New York 36, N.Y. If you are jotting this down in an address book somewhere you may as well note also that her telephone number is Murray Hill 2-2595.

I told you that she has handled Rachel Carson’s writings very successfully. In fact, from what I learned a couple of years ago it seems to me that the difference between the immediate and great success of The Sea Around Us, as compared with the earlier book Under the Sea Wind, could be attributed to a very great extent to the skilful work that Miss Rodell did in preparing the way for book publication.

I neglected to tell you that Miss Rodell also handled Durward Allen’s recent book, Our Wildlife Legacy, which also, you may have noted, has had an excellent send-off.

With all good wishes,
Howard Zahniser

Sigurd Olson to Marie Rodell, June 10, 1954

Ely, Minn.
June 10, 1954

Miss Marie S. Rodell
542 Fifth Ave.
New York, 36, N.Y.

My dear Miss Rodell:

In Washington recently, I was discussing my coming book The Pipes of Pan with Mr. Zahniser of the Wilderness Society. He told me of the wonderful promotional job you had done for Rachel Carson’s “The Sea Around Us” as well as Durward Allen’s “Our Wildlife Legacy.” Feeling that you had a real understanding and appreciation of the out of doors and its interpretation, we wondered if you might be interested in the promotion and handling of my book.

The Pipes of Pan is a collection of essays and sketches, each one averaging between 1500 and 2000 words in length, covering my experiences in the north. I took the name from the old French Ballade, “The Pipes of Pan,” because it seemed to point up exactly what I was trying to do in my writing, recapture some of the music, the wonder, and the joy of a way of life that is fast being forgotten.

I am enclosing herewith a verse of the ballade, the table of contents, introduction, and a chapter, “The Forbidden Land,” to give you an idea of what the book is like and so that you can get the feel of my writing. The essays are about finished and could have them ready for submission by early fall.

As to illustration, I think the artise Lee Jaques, (Canoe Country, Canadian Spring, Snowshoe Country) could do a sympathetic job. Lee knows the north and what is just as important, knows me and my work. Some time ago, he promised to do this whenever I was ready.

It would be much better, I know, to sit down with you to discuss the possibilities of the book, but shall be in the Quetico-Superior wilderness much of the summer. I do spend considerable time in the east, however, and perhaps sometime this fall it would be possible to come to New York to see you.

These essays and sketches are, I feel, a little different from the ordinary inasmuch as in each of them is a chance to listen to the Pipes of Pan. They might be the answer for many to the gnawing ennui of today. If they can bring some joy to those who seem to have lost their capacity to see the world of nature in a fresh, clear light, the book will be justified. I would be very pleased and happy if you would be willing to consider it.

Sincerely
Sigurd F. Olson

Marie Rodell to Sigurd Olson, June 16, 1954

Sigurd Olson to Marie Rodell, undated draft, June 30 or July 1, 1954

This is a draft of a letter that Sigurd composed shortly after receiving the above letter from Rodell. Whether he sent a final draft or not to Rodell is unclear, but she did accept his desire to write it his way and market it as such, and she did follow through with his suggestion to send the manuscript to Paul Brookes at Houghton Mifflin. Rodell would remain Sigurd’s agent for the rest of his career. [Note: the expedition he refers took place from July 1-14 along a 266-mile section of the historic voyageurs’ trail that formed the international boundary from Grand Portage to Fort Frances. The expedition ended up receiving extensive media coverage in Canada, and from then on Olson and his companions were known as “the Voyageurs.”]

My dear Miss Rodell:

I appreciated your letter of June 16th and following your suggestion am enclosing the balance of the MSS.

I judged from your reactions that you thought readers would be more interested in my personal natural history observations and adventures in the wilderness than my abstract philosophy and feeling.

There was only one reason for writing this book and that to bring in my interpretations of the meaning of the country, philosophy and appreciation. The adventure and actual observations were simply brought in as a medium through which the other could be carried.

There are many books of adventure and factual accounts of observations in the out of doors. It was not my wish to do another. The value of my book as I see it is in my interpretation of the wilderness, its meaning, and my reactions to it. I have discovered in my speaking and writing generally that this is what people want and expect from me.

You may not agree with me at all but I feel very strongly about this. If you are still interested and want to try it out why not consider The Oxford Press who published Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac or Houghton Mifflin, whose Editor Paul Brookes had a recent article in the last Atlantic Monthly on a canoe trip he took through this area. I know there are publishers who are looking for a different slant and interpretation of the out of doors, something that will be more than an adventure book, something that will enrich understanding, appreciation and possibly make for richer living. That is exactly what I had in mind.

I am leaving this morning for an expedition so will not be able to contact you for a month but I shall be looking forward to my return and a letter from you.

Sincerely,

Sigurd Olson

Later in Olson’s life, the myth would develop—a myth he encouraged—that his manuscript was rejected by eight, even ten publishers. His own papers and the files of his agent, Marie Rodell, document just three, and the timing is such that other undocumented rejections seem extremely unlikely. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful. Dodd, Mead said little in its rejection during the summer of 1954, the first of the three. George Brockway, however, writing for W.W. Norton & Co. on October 29, 1954, called the book “too diffuse, too self-conscious, and too sentimental.” .

That November of 1954 Sigurd gave a major talk in New York City, a keynote speech on the spiritual values of nature, to an audience composed of national leaders in conservation. When he arrived home there were two important letters waiting for him. The first one came from Rodell, who forwarded yet another rejection for Sigurd’s book. This one was especially painful, because it came from Paul Brooks, an editor at Houghton Mifflin who was a friend of Sigurd. Rodell also said she was going to send the manuscript to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., which at the time was considered the world’s most prestigious publisher. The second letter came from a man who had attended Sig’s talk in New York, and wanted to say how impressed he had been. He ended his letter with a question: “I am wondering if you are not going to have a book for us one of these days?”

The man, of course, was none other than Alfred A. Knopf himself. Sigurd forwarded Knopf’s letter to Marie Rodell, and said, “Perhaps Alfred Knopf will in a moment of weakness decide to take a gambling chance.”

Below are the letters from Rodell and Paul Brooks (a scan of the original letter from Brooks), and two letters from Sigurd: one to Alfred Knopf, and one to Marie Rodell, in which he quotes the key sentence from Knopf’s letter to him. Unfortunately, the original letter from Knopf has not yet been found. To see these letters in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

Marie Rodell to Sigurd Olson, November 26, 1954

November 26, 1954

Dear Sig:

There’s nothing like having a captive editor for making a sale. I am delighted to know that Barrett wants a piece from you in December. Yes, he did see TIMBER WOLVES and sent it back.

I have a copy of the WEB OF LIFE and will read it over the weekend and sent it on to you at the beginning of the week.

I am enclosing a note from Paul Brooks. The manuscript goes over to Knopf today.

Yours,
Marie F. Rodell

P.S. May I have the carbon of Saganaga which I returned to you so I can add it to the book script?

Paul Brooks to Marie Rodell, November 23, 1954

Sigurd Olson to Alfred A. Knopf, November 29, 1954

Ely, Minnesota
November 29, 1954

Mr. Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
501 Madision Ave.
New York 22, NY.

Dear Mr. Knopf:

I appreciated very much your comments on the National Parks Conference in New York and that you thought it had gone well. It probably did accomplish its purpose which was to unify the thinking of the major conservation groups and alert the press to the importance of the issue. It also served notice on congressmen generally that the Echo Park matter is being watched closely by a lot of people.

Meeting you was one of the compensations. Dr. Woodbury, Fred Packard, Connie Wirth and others had told me about you and your great interest but somehow I had always missed meeting you.

As to a book on conservation, my agent Marie F. Rodell of New York has been urging me to do one on ecology for the layman and I believe has talked to someone on your staff about it. This could develop into an interesting project and could be built around Leopold’s definition of conservation as the development of an “ecological conscience” or the one I mentioned during the New York meeting of Paul Sears, “a point of view.”

I have a note from Marie Rodell today in which she says she is submitting the manuscript of a book of mine “The Pipes of Pan” for your consideration. It is a collection of essays and sketches of my experiences, and while not strictly a conservation book, the philosophy of understanding and interpretation runs through it. Should you decide to publish, it might set the stage for the other.

Kindest regards.
Sigurd Olson

Sigurd Olson to Marie Rodell, November 29, 1954

Ely, Minnesota
November 29, 1954

Dear Marie:

I am stealing all the time possible to get the promised piece for Peter Barrett, but don’t know whether under pressure I can do the thing I had in mind. In a few days I hit the airplanes again. A captive editor is a wonderful thing but captives have to be fed or they die on you. Thank heaven he wants to see Timber Wolves again.

Shall be looking forward to The Web of Life with much interest. By the way isn’t the attached letter from Alfred Knopf also of interest – “I am wondering if you are not going to have a book for us one of these days?” Do you call this sort of thing fortuitous or what.

Paul Brooks’ reaction was certainly not good was it, but he is partly wrong because I have spent a lot of my life writing about what I have been doing and were it not for a lot of other favorable comments on my writing and style, his letter might have thrown me for a loop. I am wondering if you are not getting discouraged about the book and its chances after all of these turn downs. If you are, I don’t blame you. Perhaps Alfred Knopf will in a moment of weakness decide to take a gambling chance.

Am enclosing the carbon of “Farewll to Saganaga” as you requested. Don’t forget to substitute the revision on the last couple of pages for the original.

Sincerely,
Sigurd Olson

January of 1955 must have been a joyous month in the Olson household. Finally, after so many years, he was on his way to becoming an author. The first letter below, from Marie Rodell, indicates the good news. The letter from Knopf of which she speaks I have not seen, as Sigurd would have returned it to Rodell. It was not from Alfred Knopf the person, however, but from Philip Vaudrin, who would act as editor of Sigurd’s book for Knopf Inc. Sigurd’s letter to Rodell, included below, responds to the points that Vaudrin’s letter would have addressed. In between those two letters, in the space below and also in time, is Alfred Knopf’s personal letter to Sigurd about the manuscript. A scan of this letter is displayed. The final letter is from Rodell to Olson. To see these letters in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.

Marie Rodell to Sigurd Olson, January 3, 1955

January 3, 1955

Dear Sig:

I am enclosing some good news from Knopf. When you’ve had a chance to read the letter, please let me have it back with your comments and decisions. I think I can probably up the amount of the advance if that’s important to you. When do you plan to be this way again?

Yours,
Marie F. Rodell

Alfred A. Knopf to Sigurd Olson, January 6, 1955

Sigurd Olson to Marie Rodell, January 7, 1955

Ely, Minnesota
Jan 7, 1954 [sic]

Mrs. Marie F. Rodell
15 East 48th Street
New York 17, NY.

Dear Marie:

What a nice New Year’s letter you wrote me and how wonderful to have the matter of a publisher settled at last and a good one. Many thanks for your long suffering patience and your faith in the book. As to the conditions that Alfred Knopf imposes, I am willing to make any changes necessary or to provide any additional materials he needs. We might as well go over his letter point by point.

1. I will get to work on the additional essays he needs to fill out the book. I have about 6 partly done. When I mentioned to you earlier that I could get them ready I envisioned having a week or two to whip them into shape. If there is no great urgency, I will get to work on them and finish them within the next few months. If there is a time factor involved, I’ll just have to crawl into a hole somewhere and forget about airplanes and long distance calls and correspondence until they are finished.

2. I will be amenable to editorial changes of a stylistic nature – though I do not quite understand what is meant. Does he want me to make the changes or does he refer to changes his editorial staff might make? No doubt this sort of thing will have to be worked out in conference.

3. I am perfectly willing to change the title and rework the introduction also eliminate all references where they occur in following chapters.

4. As to the type of map locating the general area of the wilderness, I will have to discuss that with Mr. Knopf as there are many kinds of maps on hand. I think this is an excellent idea and will add much to the book itself. It might be that Lee Jaques could do an effective black and white sketch that would be better than a straight reproduction of any existing map.

5. It will be easy to reorganize the text to give it continuity and the idea of doing it along seasonal lines appeals to me very much. In fact when I originally thought of getting these essays together in book form, I had that in mind. This should not be difficult inasmuch as there is a fairly even distribution seasonally right now.

6. As to an artist to do the illustrations, I cannot think of anyone who can compare with the black and white sketches and line drawings of Francis Lee Jaques. What is more, he knows and loves the country I am writing about and has spent a great deal of time back in the wilderness. He has the feel of it and will do an excellent job from the standpoint of interpretation. Some time ago while he and his wife Florence Page Jaques were visiting us we discussed the possibility of a book and at that time, Lee promised to do the sketches whenever I was ready. I shall wait however in approaching him until we have a reaction from Mr. Knopf.

His books Snowshoe Country [and] Canoe Country put out by the University of Minnesota Press will give a good idea of what he can do. Attached I am sending along a few tear sheets of sketches from magazine articles and from the recent report of the Quetico-Superior Committee to President Eisenhower. I shall be glad to forward copies of the two books mentioned in case they cannot be obtained in New York.

Also attached to the sample sketches are two maps of the Quetico-Superior Area which may be of interest to Mr. Knopf and his staff.

7. As to my schedule, I plan on leaving Ely Sunday the 15th, will be in Washington through Tuesday the 18th. Would it be possible to arrange a conference with Mr. Knopf for Wednesday the 19th. If that works out, I’ll leave Washington Wednesday morning arrive down town NY about 10:30 and catch a plane for Chicago where I have a speaking engagement Thursday afternoon, either that night or early Thursday. You had better wire me as soon as you know.

You failed to enclose Alfred Knopf’s second page but assume from what you said, it had something to do with an advance.

Sincerely,
Sigurd F. Olson

Marie Rodell to Sigurd Olson, January 11, 1955

January 3, 1955

Dear Sig:

I am so sorry that the second page of the Knopf letter was omitted. The letter was not from Alfred Knopf but from Philip Vaudrin, who will be your editor on the project. He is a very nice and very knowledgeable guy (he was the editor at Oxford to whom I sold THE SEA AROUND US) and I feel sure that you will enjoy working with him.

The rest of the letter went on as you suspected to discuss terms: an advance of $500 on delivery of the manuscript against 17 1/2% of the wholesale price on the first 5,000 copies; 21% on the next 5,000 and 23% thereafter. They would like to publish the book sometime this year.

I wired you yesterday that Mr. Knopf and Mr. Vaudrin would be happy to see you on Wednesday, the nineteenth. Philip suggests that you call when you get to New York that morning and arrange with him for the most suitable hour.

Vaudrin knows Jaques’ work and was enchanted with the idea that he could do the illustrations for your book.

I am glad this has all worked out this way; I don’t think you could be in better hands.

Yours,
Marie F. Rodell

The Singing Wilderness was published by Alfred A. Knopf on April 16, 1956. For Sigurd Olson, it was the end of a longtime dream and the beginning of a new phase of life. The narrative below, an excerpt from A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson, tells the story of its release and success.

Here’s the excerpt:

The Singing Wilderness was published on April 16, 1956, twelve days after Sigurd Olson’s fifty-seventh birthday. Publicity began earlier. Olson appeared on television in Minneapolis and St. Paul the evening of April 12, and the next day he signed copies of the book at Dayton’s Department store in downtown Minneapolis. The first major review was published on April 15 in Saturday Review. The prominent literary critic Bruce Hutchison wrote:

A day with such a man in the woods must be an education. Even with the abbreviated compass of a book written rather like a casual yarn around the evening campfire, he manages to mix an extraordinary amount of information with a picture of the wilderness whole. For to him it is a whole thing, an organic body of which all life, from the lichen to the man, is interdependent, logical, and in timeless rhythm.

Hutchison established the tone for reviews in many other publications, both large and small. Renowned naturalist Roger Tory Peterson told readers of the New York Herald Tribune Book Review that The Singing Wilderness “is unequivocally the best series of essays on the northwoods country I have ever read.” Nationally known outdoor writer Gordon MacQuarrie told Milwaukee Journal readers that Olson’s work was an “inspiring book…of Leopold quality.” The Christian Science Monitor called the book “as pleasing to the eye and ear as a whitethroat in a full burst of song.” The Chicago Sunday Tribune said that while readers may not be able to regularly visit wild places, the “can hear the song of the wilderness in the overtones of such a book as this.”

One piece of good news followed another. On May 13, 1956, The Singing Wilderness made the New York Times bestseller list, weighing in at sixteenth place. On May 21, Marie Rodell wrote that nearly forty-four hundred copies of the book had sold, and that Knopf had ordered a second printing. (“All in all, not too bad,” Knopf wrote dryly to Rodell on May 22. ) In June The Singing Wilderness made the Philadelphia Inquirer’s bestseller list. In July the Lutheran Book Club bought eighteen hundred copies to sell to its members. By year’s end Olson’s book sold more than six thousand copies, and the American Library Association, saying that The Singing Wilderness made “a signal contribution to the literary world,” included it in the group’s annual list of notable books.

Congratulatory letters poured in to Ely from friends and family. Fellow Voyageur Eric Morse wrote, “Sig, long have I heard you discourse around the campfire, and spout wisdom from the stern of a canoe–but you have kept your light under that shot-up hat of yours. You are a poet, man!” Wilderness Society Director Olaus Murie wrote that he and his wife read a chapter aloud each night and discussed it. “Sig, it is marvelous,” he said. Benton MacKaye, one of the Wilderness Society’s founders, wrote that “Never via talk or reading have I heard or seen any such insight on natural harmony as you display.” Another of the group’s founders, Harvey Broome, joked that Sigurd wrote so well people might see his book as a substitute for the outdoors. The Singing Wilderness, in fact, cemented the Wilderness Society’s decision to add Olson to its governing council in 1956. “He has the words and feelings of a poet and deep understanding,” said council member George Marshall on April 13. “I am more enthusiastic about him than ever.” Sigurd officially joined the council during its annual meeting in August.

After laboring so long under the shadow of his older brother, the highly acclaimed dean of Northwestern University’s journalism school, Sigurd must have been especially pleased by the letter Kenneth wrote on April 9, 1956: “Brother, I never appreciated how you can write. This is pure prose poetry–the pictures you paint with words. Someday English classes are going to study this as literature. It’s better than Thoreau ever did….Brother, am I proud to even know you!” (The competition between them had not quite ended, however. A few years later, after Sigurd had joined Kenneth in Who’s Who in America, written several more books and received a number of awards, Kenneth would say, “Well, Sigurd, I guess you’re the most famous of us.”)

But what must have delighted Olson even more than the letters from friends and family were those that came from people he had never met. “At last,” wrote a North Dakota man, “I now have found a modern pen which evokes moods and thoughts that far transcend our mundane day-to-day existence.” A woman who left no return address on her letter said that whenever she read bits of The Singing Wilderness, “all of life seems to come into the proper focus again.” Kathy Beaumont wrote from California that she and her husband, Hugh (shown at right)–an actor who played Ward Cleaver in the popular television series “Leave it to Beaver”–placed Sigurd’s book “with a few special bedside volumes.”

Many readers described their personal memories of places where they had heard “the singing wilderness,” and many took up the theme voiced by a Maryland man who had been reading the book to his bed-ridden wife: “You have found expression for all the urges that have driven us, all our lives, to take up our packs and search out the far places–feelings beyond our power or expression that have welled up in us as we have camped many places in the wilderness.” One of Sigurd’s favorites came from a Connecticut book publisher, John Howland Snow, who said he read part of the book “to the accompaniment of the Beethoven Ninth,” and added: “Thank you for adding a depth to my horizon, and some comprehension of things which, unlived, otherwise might have remained unknown. Thank you for your enrichment of our symphonic literature.”

The letters were the beginning of a steady stream that continued for the rest of Sigurd’s life. While most were from people living in the Midwest, they came from all over; an unscientific sample of roughly a hundred written between 1956 and 1961 originated in nearly two dozen states and three Canadian provinces. Sometimes they came from eccentrics, such as the man who said he spoke to spirits and wanted Sigurd to endorse his booklet, “A Personal Testimony to Life After Death.” Some of them must have brought a smile to his face for other reasons, as when a young woman wrote as a match-maker for her widowed mother. [Women, in fact, wrote nearly forty percent of the letters in the sample.] Some letters came from prospective writers and artists and conservationists, seeking advice. Some came from people who wanted to know where they should go on their canoe trips, or what they should take. Most, however, simply expressed admiration and gratitude for Olson’s writing. He, in turn, made it a practice to answer every letter that came his way; if he was home when one arrived, he nearly always responded within a few days.

Olson had developed his land aesthetic independent of Aldo Leopold’s version published in A Sand County Almanac. He had written drafts of many of the essays in The Singing Wilderness a full decade or more before he saw Leopold’s book, and some of the key ideas were present in articles of Olson’s published in the 1930s and 1940s. Olson’s land aesthetic also differed from Leopold’s in some important respects. But Olson’s writing style was more accessible to a wider audience, and The Singing Wilderness sold at roughly twice the rate of A Sand County Almanac until the mid-1960s. In 1966, Oxford University Press reached an agreement with Ballantine Books to issue an inexpensive paperback edition of A Sand County Almanac (including several essays from another Leopold book, Round River) and sales skyrocketed as the new, more affordable edition made its way into university classrooms and caught the wave of the nation’s burgeoning interest in the environment. The Singing Wilderness, however, played an important role in sowing the cultural field that A Sand County Almanac later reaped, for without developing a sense of beauty, joy, connectedness, and wonder there is little motivation to pay heed to, much less live, a land ethic. And the book remained Olson’s most popular, with hardcover sales approaching seventy thousand by its fortieth anniversary in 1996. Excerpts were printed in a variety of publications in several languages, including Arabic and Russian; and portions of the book were read on radio and television programs.

On a personal level, the publication and success of The Singing Wilderness was an immensely satisfying culmination of a long and hard-fought dream. For thirty years Sigurd Olson had been obsessed with writing, had felt it was his ordained mission in life, that success was his destiny. The odds often had seemed insurmountable: the kind of writing he was best at and loved most was the kind editors said had no market, and the kind that editors said was marketable was the kind that yielded scathing rejection letters when Sigurd attempted it. He had felt trapped in an unfulfilling career, stuck in a community full of people who couldn’t intellectually relate to him, and had sealed off his deepest beliefs, thoughts, and fears from his own family. Succumbing to periods of despair, he had bewildered his wife and damaged his health. He couldn’t explain these things. He hadn’t wanted to make life hard for Elizabeth or for their children or for himself. His dream went beyond want; it was a fire burning within him, a consuming flame that had the potential to fulfill or destroy him. Somehow, despite the many rejections, despite the self-torture–despite the genuinely long odds of succeeding as a writer of essays–he had held fast to his dream, and had triumphed.

The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd Olson’s first book, was published by Alfred A. Knopf on April 16, 1956. The narrative below, an excerpt from A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson, compares Olson’s first book and the philosophy he expresses in it with that of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

Here’s the excerpt:

Sigurd Olson wanted The Singing Wilderness to capture the joy, the wonder, and the sense of connectedness he had experienced outdoors. As he was working on the manuscript in January 1954 he read a recent book by John Masefield called So Long to Learn, and took it as a sign that he was on the right track. Masefield had experienced the kind of epiphanies that Olson had known so well, and that, in Sigurd’s mind, W.H. Hudson had come closest to capturing in print. Olson typically called these moments “flashes of insight,” while Masefield described them as entering “into that greater life,” but Olson could agree completely with Masefield’s description of the importance of these experiences to modern society: “I believe that life [the greater life] to be the source of all that is of glory or goodness in this world; and that modern man, not knowing that life, is dwelling in death.”

Masefield also lamented that “fewer and fewer men are taking the discipline of the arts as qualifications for the attempt to know that glory and to bring from it something shining for man.” Olson seized on that thought as he fleshed out the manuscript early in 1954:

In the essays I am working on, each one must bring through it something shining for man. Each must tap somehow, enable men to touch that “greater life,” the source of all glory, beauty, goodness in this world….If each thing I write will somehow have this illumination, this glow, this transcendent beauty, the feeling of having touched the absolute, it will be enough. I can do this by bringing in somehow my feeling for the primeval, the origins of things, the Pipes of Pan, the glory, the sense of wonder, awe, oneness with all life and the universe itself, the childlike quality soon lost of being part of that greater life.

The Singing Wilderness follows most of the standard expectations for nature writing that had evolved since 1789, when the English clergyman Gilbert White produced the genre’s prototype, The Natural History of Selborne. Like most books of the sort, The Singing Wilderness imparts a vivid sense of place, contains affectionate descriptions of the flora and fauna encountered in that place, and is organized episodically, employing a standard seasonal format. But The Singing Wilderness differs from traditional nature writing in that the book’s essays, while highly personal and strongly evocative of a particular place, are at the same time meant to be representative of experiences readers have already known, or can if they try. “In the chapters that follow,” the introduction concludes,

I tell of my experiences in the north, but far more important than the places I have seen or what I have done or thought about is the possibility of hearing the singing wilderness and catching perhaps its real meaning. You may not hear it exactly as I did, but somewhere along the trails I have followed, you too may know the glory.

It is useful to compare the book to Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, often referred to as the bible of the modern environmental movement, although there are important differences between the two works. Some of these are stylistic. Leopold, for example, wrote with a tightly controlled pen, taking great care with the most minute details of his narrative and using extremely precise language. Olson, on the other hand, interested much more in abstract feelings, painted word pictures with a broad brush. The tone of the books also differed, reflecting quite distinct personalities. A Sand County Almanac, despite passages of beautiful description and entertaining wit, is a much darker book than The Singing Wilderness. A theme of loss, sometimes depicted with biting sarcasm, pervades Leopold’s narrative. Olson, on the other hand, while critical of modern society, uses a narrative voice that most often is optimistic, and never sarcastic.

The most important difference between the two books, however, lies in their major goals. Leopold wanted A Sand County Almanac primarily to do two things: to present fundamental ecological principles in a way that would hold the interest of a nonscientific audience, and to inculcate love and respect for natural communities through what he called “the land ethic.” Because the book serves as a warning to modern culture as well as a doctrine for change, and because of the charismatic power of Leopold’s text, A Sand County Almanac has been described as “the utterance of an American Isaiah.”

If the Leopold of A Sand County Almanac is an Old Testament prophet, then the Olson of The Singing Wilderness is a New Testament evangelist. Where Leopold invokes the God of power and wrath, preaching proper ethical behavior toward the land and prophesying doom if society disobeys, Olson invites his readers to experience the God of love, as made manifest in nature.

But A Sand County Almanac and The Singing Wilderness are no more incompatible for environmentalists than the Old and New Testaments are for Christians. Olson echoes Leopold’s critique of and prescription for modern society, and Leopold echoes Olson’s sense of wonder and joy. It is the different emphasis the authors give to shared goals that most distinguishes the two books. And it is this difference that makes comparing these works especially valuable, because the major contribution of The Singing Wilderness is that it provides a sustained treatment of a theme that was important to Leopold but strewn here and there in A Sand County Almanac, a theme that philosopher J. Baird Callicott has labeled “the land aesthetic.”

It was a new, in fact revolutionary, aesthetic based in part upon full use of the senses. In Western culture, the dominant perspective on the beauty of nature–conceived, created, distributed and perpetuated by artists–was based almost entirely on visual stimulation. Out of this picturesque aesthetic in art arose such terms as “landscape” and “scenery” as we use them today. Natural beauty was perceived as a function of composition, as judged by the human eye according to standards of landscape painting and, eventually, photography. The national parks were selected according to this picturesque aesthetic; they were monuments of scenic beauty. And the standard remains to this day, by and large. There’s the story, for example, of how the famous landscape photographer Edward Weston would sleep in the passenger seat of his car while his wife drove around the countryside, searching for anything with a “Weston look.” When she found it, we would wake him so he could photograph the scene.

In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold described the picturesque aesthetic as merely a beginning, and claimed that appreciation of beauty is greatly enhanced but such non-visual sensory stimuli as the trumpeting of a sandhill crane, the rich smell of soil after a rain, the taste of ripe blackberries, and the warmth of sun on the skin. What was revolutionary, however, was his declaration that, in addition to full use of the senses, a true land aesthetic required a mind informed by knowledge of evolution and ecology. In the essay “Marshland Elegy,” he writes that “our appreciation of the crane grows with the slow unraveling of earthly history.

His tribe, we now know, stems out of the remote Eocene. The other members of the fauna in which he originated are long since entombed within the hills. When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of the incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.

Leopold professed that knowledge of evolution deepens human perception, and that an understanding of ecology–of communities and interdependencies–boradens perception. (As Callicott points out, “We cannot love cranes and hate marshes.”) A marsh does not conform to the picturesque aesthetic, but a mind informed by evolutionary and ecological biology will perceive it as beautiful and precious. “Amid the endless mediocrity of the commonplace,” writes Leopold, “a crane marsh holds a paleontological patent of nobility, won in the march of aeons.”

In a culture where aesthetic taste is still dominated by the picturesque, however, it is difficult to convey what a land aesthetic experience feels like. Just as Aldo Leopold did–and Sam Campbell, too–Sigurd Olson sensed that an aural metaphor, rather than a visual one, best captured its essence. Olson was less direct than Leopold, but the land aesthetic permeated The Singing Wilderness, from its aural-based title through each of its thirty-four essays.

Like Leopold, Olson uses knowledge of geology and evolution to add depth to perception. A piece of greenstone is much more than a rock–it is “part of the original crust formed when the molten lavas and gases first cooled,” a symbol of the planet’s enormous timespan that dwarfs human history. Caribou moss is beautiful and precious in part because it is an evolved combination of two different plants, “one whose rootlets can break down the rock [on which it grows], the other embedded deep within its tissues, a green and globular alga.” Referring to frogs calling in a bog at night, he writes:

This is a primeval chorus, the sort of wilderness music which reigned over the earth millions of years ago. That sound floated across the pools of the carboniferous era. You can still hear it in the Everglades: the throaty, rasping roar of the alligators and, above that, the frightened calls and screams of innumerable birds. One of the most ancient sounds on earth, it is a continuation of music from the past, and, no matter where I listen to a bog at night, strange feelings stir within me.

Like Leopold, Olson also uses ecological knowledge to broaden perception. The caribou moss, for example, not only has an interesting evolutionary background, but plays an important ecological role: “Those silvery little tufts before me are the shock troops of the north, the commandos with which the plant kingdom made a beachhead on a barren, rocky ridge. Surviving where other types would die, needing nothing but crystalline rocks and air, they prepare the way for occupation and for the communities to come.” The lesson is clear: To paraphrase Callicott, we cannot love pines, cedars, and junipers, and hate caribous moss. Olson, not surprisingly, often displays a special fondness for those elements of the natural world that don’t fit traditional notions of beauty: he enjoys scrub oaks and rocks and tamaracks, and declares that “swamps are always a pleasure.”

But Olson’s land aesthetic is not a clone of Leopold’s. One important difference, for example, is in the level of trust each writer places in science. “Science,” says Leopold, “contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. It’s great moral contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may.” Olson, on the other hand, uses “facts” and theories generated by scientific research, but fears that scientific rationalism has gained far too much power in society. Time and again he made it clear that scientific knowledge is an aid to understanding and appreciation, nothing more. “To be sure,” he writes in an essay about weasels called “The River,” “the ecological factors are important–the endless cycle of carnivores and herbivores, the inevitable assimilation of vegetable matter to flesh and blood and back again….but what really counts is how [weasels] make me feel and how they contribute to the character and quality of wilderness.”

In fact, Olson worried that scientific knowledge, because of its claims to objectivity, could overrun less empirical beliefs that contained genuine truths of equal or even greater importance to humans. In the essay “Northern Lights,” for example, after giving the standard scientific explanation for the aurora borealis, Olson presents another, competing description he had learned as a child, one based on American Indian mythology. He could believe what the scientists had discovered, but expressed regret for the personal and cultural cost of such knowledge: diminishment of “the wonderment that only a child can know and a beauty that is enhanced by mystery.”

Olson’s land aesthetic algo goes further than Leopold’s in incorporating humans. In the essay “Pools of the Isabella,” for example, Olson shows how the appreciation of a wild place can deepen through human associations. “During the many years I have fished the Isabella,” Olson said, “it has become a part of me.” Why? Not because it is picturesque, not because he knows its ecological history, but because each pool along the river brings back specific memories. “When I wade the Isabella,” he says, “I am never alone. I always hear forgotten banter in the sounds of the rapids, the soft rhythmic swish of familiar rods. These things are as much a part of the river as the trout themselves.”

Human history also plays an important role in Olson’s land aesthetic. His enjoyment of Lac la Croix is enhanced by his knowledge of the location where Ojibwa warriors long ago had staged races, and by seeing the reddish-brown pictographs along the cliffs of Shortiss Island. Knowing that European fur traders had traveled the same waters a hundred fifty years earlier adds to this appreciation of human interaction with the land, and Olson writes that one who successfully navigates a stretch of spuming whitewater can hear “all the voyageurs of the past join the rapids in their shouting.”

The human aspects of Olson’s landscape aesthetic are not limited to the past. Several times in The Singing Wilderness Olson encounters primitive trappers’ cabins in the canoe country, and, taking care to distinguish these one-room shacks from a “modern mouse-proof cabin,” he praises them: “Trappers’ cabins are as natural as tents or teepees. They are part of the solitudes and as much a part of the wilderness as the trees and rocks themselves.” And in “Pools of the Isabella,” Olson, in recalling his friend and former Ely grade school principal Glenn Powers, shows that the human act of fly-fishing can also be beautiful, and in harmony with the land.

Olson’s inclusion of humans in the land aesthetic stems from his concern for the spiritual and psychological health of modern society. Restating his long-held belief in what he called “racial memory,” he writes in the introduction that “uncounted centuries of the primitive have left their mark upon us, and civilization has not changed emotional needs that were ours before the dawn of history.” Modern society, in distancing itself from the natural world to which it belongs, has left these needs unfilled, and the result is widespread disillusionment. “We sense intuitively that there must be something more,” he writes,

Search for panaceas we hope will give us a sense of reality, fill our days and nights with such activity and our minds with such busyness that there is little time to think. When the pace stops we are often lost, and we plunge once more into the maelstrom hoping that if we move fast enough, somehow we may fill the void within us.

In writing The Singing Wilderness, Olson’s goal was not to create a land aesthetic; that he did create one is simply a by-product of his major goal, which was to show that the unmet needs of the civilized world could be found by interacting regularly and simply with the non-civilized world. Picking berries, looking for pine knots, fly-fishing, paddling a canoe, and many other activities not only are fulfilling in themselves, but even have “ritualistic significance,” as Olson points out in his essay, “Campfires.” Such activities, he says, give people “an opportunity to participate in an act hallowed by the devotion of forgotten generations.

Olson implies, in fact, that the most deeply fulfilling human acts also are the acts that are most likely to be in harmony with natural processes. Paddling a canoe, therefore, becomes much more than a way to get from one point to another. “The movement of a canoe,” he says in one of the book’s most poetic passages, “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.”

This sense of communion is the most distinguishing characteristic of The Singing Wilderness, and marks the fulfillment of the land aesthetic. Olson described it best in his essay on “Silence,” which, when he began working on the manuscript in 1952, he thought set the tone for the entire book. The essay is about the kind of deep communion that yields what Olson described as “flashes of insight.” The three core paragraphs of the essay, which had their origins in a January 1930 journal entry, form the centerpiece of the book:

I once climbed a great ridge called Robinson Peak to watch the sunset and to get a view of the lakes and rivers below, the rugged hills and valleys of the Quetico-Superior. When I reached the bald knob of the peak the sun was just above the horizon, a flaming ball ready to drop into the dusk below. Far beneath me on a point of pines reaching into the lake was the white inverted V of my tent. It looked very tiny down there where it was almost night.

As I watched and listened, I became conscious of the slow, steady hum of millions of insects and through it the calling of the whitethroats and the violin notes of the hermit thrushes. But it all seemed very vague from that height and very far away, and gradually they merged one with another, blending in a great enveloping softness of sound no ouder, it seemed, than my breathing.

The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition, “Be still and know that I am God,” and knew that without stillness there can be no knowing, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means.

This passage demonstrates how Olson’s land aesthetic is intimately connected to what Leopold called the “land ethic;” just as certain norms of behavior are required if patrons of an art museum are to have a full aesthetic experience, so are they required if “patrons”–the better word is “pilgrims”–of the wilderness are to achieve the complete land aesthetic experience of communion with the cosmos. Olson’s purpose in The Singing Wilderness is not to define a proper land ethic, but he sometimes states clear preferences. Later in the essay on “Silence,” for example, he writes, “At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege.”

The land aesthetic of The Singing Wilderness, however, does not always provide clear guidelines for behavior. In the essay “Forest Pool,” for example, Olson traces the history of a pond from its wilderness origins through the dramatic changes wrought by humans over the course of several generations, without clearly indicating his approval or disapproval of the end result: the total destruction of the pool and its replacement by a field of corn. In his next book, Listening Point, Olson would spend more time examining behavioral issues, and would reach a more clear conclusion about the proper relationship between the civilized and non-civilized worlds, between culture and wilderness.