The Meaning of Wilderness: Essential Articles and SpeechesDespite the enduring popularity of The Singing Wilderness, Listening Point, Reflections from the North Country, and his other books, a major portion of Sigurd F. Olson's wilderness writing-much of it originating as speeches-has been relatively inaccessible, scattered in a number of magazines and obscure books over a period of more than fifty years, or never published at all. The Meaning of Wilderness gathers together the most important of Olson's articles and speeches, making them available in one place for the first time. The book also contains an introduction and chapter-by-chapter commentary by Olson's authorized biographer, David Backes, that help the reader discover the various facets of Olson's wilderness philosophy and their development over time. |
Contents
Why Wilderness? 1938 | 47 |
Flying In 1945 | 57 |
We Need Wilderness 1946 | 68 |
The Preservation of Wilderness 1948 | 78 |
Those Intangible Things 1954 | 84 |
The Spiritual Need 1966 | 144 |
Writings by Sigurd F Olson | 175 |
Index | 183 |
Other editions - View all
The Meaning of Wilderness: Essential Articles and Speeches Sigurd F. Olson No preview available - 2001 |
The Meaning of Wilderness: Essential Articles and Speeches Sigurd F. Olson,David Backes No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
adventure American bass beauty become camp campsite canoe country Chicago Loop cities civilization conservation continent cultural earth ecological explore feel Field and Stream fishing frontier human important intangible values island Izaak Walton League knew lakes land Lewis Mumford Listening Point Living Wilderness look meaning of wilderness miles Minneapolis Star-Journal Minnesota mountains muskeg nature ness never once paddling Park Service past perspective pioneer places portages preservation of wilderness primeval primitive Quetico Quetico-Superior racial memory realization recreational regions rivers roadless roads Robinson Peak sense shore Sierra Club Sigurd F Sigurd Olson solitude spiritual values Sports Afield spot of blue Superior National Forest things timber tion towns trails trees trout U.S. Forest Service urban values of wilderness voyageurs wild wilderness areas wilderness experience wilderness living wilderness preservation Wilderness Society Wildlife wonder
Popular passages
Page 44 - We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thundercloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Page 16 - We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more ^- solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
Page 138 - A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
Page 144 - Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction...
Page xxviii - ... we need an environmental ethic that will tell us as much about using nature as about not using it. The wilderness dualism tends to cast any use as ab-use, and thereby denies us a middle ground in which responsible use and non-use might attain some kind of balanced, sustainable relationship.
Page 140 - No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they mis-guessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke.
Page 67 - Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
Page 123 - The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
Page 140 - The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes, The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.
References to this book
NOLS Wilderness Ethics: Valuing and Managing Wild Places Jennifer Lamb,National Outdoor Leadership School (U.S.) No preview available - 2006 |