In the annals of American nature writing, few stand as tall as Sigurd Olson.
As a young man in the 1920s, Olson was a canoe guide in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, and saw how city dwellers were rejuvenated by just a few nights in a tent. He became an evangelist for wilderness, and wrote a series of highly influential books on the outdoors, odes to loons and solitude, with titles like
Runes of the North and
The Lonely Land. Those books are full of epic canoe trips, where one rediscovers a “zest for living and joy on the trail.” Life is simpler in Olson’s boat; one can “iron out the wrinkles in my soul.” Olson would go on to win the John Burroughs Medal, the highest award for the literature of natural history...