Out of all the authors that I read, the one that I keep coming back to is Sigurd Olson. Olson was born in 1899 and raised in northwestern Wisconsin. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and taught biology at Ely Junior College in Ely, Minnesota for the rest of his life. It was his time in Ely (northeastern Minnesota) where he was introduced to the Superior Roadless Area, a massive unspoiled wilderness made up of millions of acres of woods and thousands of lakes. It marked the beginning of the northern frontier--wild country that went all the way to the Arctic Ocean. Today, that plot is now called the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness--two million acres of woods, lakes, rock, moose, and wolves. It is also the most heavily used wilderness area in the country. It also borders Canada and Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park, another huge wilderness area. Olson (along with the late-congressman Bruce Vento) is largely responsible for the creation of BWCAW.Sigurd Olson, first and foremost, was a best-selling author of nature writings in the 1950's and 60's. Through his writings he articulated very simply the spirit or the romance that characterizes the North. He often draws on the early French explorers that first came to the area northwest of Lake Superior in the early 1600's, the Indians before them, and the Scottish and British traders that came later. The significance of these people is that the ancient portages they used and the rivers they ran look just as they did hundreds of years ago because of conservation. Most importantly, he was able through his writings to use the imaginations of thousands of people to motivate them to conserve and enjoy wild places. But, things are changing and not for the better.
The Superior National Forest surrounds the BWCAW and the Chippewa National Forest is found in the Central Lakes Region of Minnesota. They are public lands to be used for timber harvest as well as hunting, fishing, camping, etc. But, the current administration along with our shill of a governor are allowing for the auctioning off of these lands for private development. The BWCA may not go away but the roadless areas that bump up against it are disappearing quickly. What is happening to them is that they are being bought by developers, subdivided, and then developed, usually by plunking down a log McMansion. Along with development comes the usual problems--pollution. Since there is no sewer system up north, septic systems are being put in, often times improperly, and then they often leak and contaminate streams, lakes, and ground water with various bacteriae--including every ones' favorite E.Coli.
People also have to have lawns. They put in sod. They have to fertilize. Since the soil is thin and the granite bedrock is very thick, fertilizers find their way into lakes through spates of run-off following rain storms and then dramatically increases a given lake's vegetation growth. When there is too much vegetation in a lake and it dies in the fall it produces a surplus of carbon dioxide which suffocates fish populations and other aquatic fauna.
Then there is the element of sad comedy what arrives with human development.
Have you ever been at a camp ground, and an obnoxious family pulls up at the next campsite in a 150 foot motor home with an external gas generator to run the 56'' HD TV complete with satellite dish outside in front of the family's portable theater seating? It has happened to me. The McMansioning of the North is the next step. Rather than living the sort of life that Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, and Sigurd Olson advocated, people are hauling their shit to the lake.
I like my laptop. I like some stuff. We all do. Bush and the Cons are not totally responsible for the hole the Middle Class is in. There are the instances of credit cards, car loans, and zero-down adjustable rate mortgages. We don't save like we used to. Have have as a nation spent more than we earned last year--for the first time since the early 1930's. We have done our share to create the economy we have. We want cheap crap and we want a lot of it. Look at the clothing you have hanging in your closet. Where is it made? China? Is it something that is going to last for years? Do you need that many shirts? That many pairs of shoes? It used to be that we actually payed for the things we bought. We at least made a sizable down payment on a house and a car. Credit is a good thing when used correctly. It has enable us to own things like houses, but we can't use it they was that we do. We buy. We use. We throw out. We still owe. As Thoreau said, we are leading lives of quiet desperation. Just as we need to be careful with money we need to be careful with our wild places. But, it is our inorganic need to acquire stuff that is damaging the wild places that we so desperately need. We need to understand them. We need to understand ecological balance.
We are not programed to live in cities and suburbs. I know from first hand experience what the sound of water lapping against the side of a canoe, the light of a campfire, the howl of wolves, the sound of wind through a stand of primeval pine trees does for the human condition. It is important to protect these places and it is important to go to these places. We need to educate children about these places.
The saddest thing is we are losing any sense of adventure.
