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Sigurd F. Olson (1899--1982), the great
environmentalist and conservation activist, often wrote of
Wisconsin's Namekagon River and its surrounding landscape.
Olson spent his early formative years in Wisconsin and was
educated there before moving to northern Minnesota as a
young married man. He eventually ended up in Ely,
Minnesota, often thought of as the gateway to the
Quetico-Superior Boundary Waters canoeing area, and spent
his adult years there, fashioning careers in guiding,
extensive writing and conservation activism. The University
of Minnesota Press has kept seven of his nine books in
print; they have also published a collection of his many
articles and speeches, The Meaning Of
Wilderness, along with a superb biography of Olson,
The Life Of Sigurd F. Olson by David Backes.
All of these books are readily available though numerous
channels and are often seen on the shelves of bookstores,
particularly in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.
Olson's environmental and conservation
theories are subject to debate. He was a proponent of the
"chaos theory," which essentially states that certain
sections of landscape should be protected presently and for
the future by sealing them off entirely from virtually any
active management interference by man, the idea being to
let nature "take its course." The Boundary Waters canoeing
area, to cite one example, is managed in this fashion, both
in its United States and Canadian sections. Modern
conservation theory generally calls for a more aggressively
"proactive" approach, particularly in heavily
industrialized or farmed areas, an example of this being
our own Trout Unlimited Iowa Driftless Chapter's local
stream restoration efforts, where continued intensive
farming practices call for very active plans to reduce silt
loads in area streams and to control flooding as well as
possible. In some western states, it has been discovered
that limited and controlled rotational grazing of livestock
can be more beneficial to certain arid lands than keeping
them free of livestock. This approach more closely
resembles the state of the land when buffalo roamed freely
and among other things aerated the ground by their
movements. It is probably wise to consider both theories
when trying to decide what might be best for preserving
certain landscapes and waterways.
Regardless of specific conservation
practices and theories, Sigurd Olson wrote movingly and
knowledgeably about all landscapes with which he was
familiar, and his great body of work has enriched the lives
of countless readers. In the chapter "The Hemlocks" from
Of Time And Place, Olson writes of walking the
wooded hills along the Namekagon with his grandson near his
wife's family farm in search of hemlock trees, which even
in the early 1980s were becoming quite rare. They found
five on their walks. In perhaps Olson's most famous book,
The Singing Wilderness, he writes in
"Grandmother's Trout" of catching brook trout as a very
young boy and bringing them home to his Grandmother for a
simple but memorable evening meal. Though primarily an
outdoorsman and secondarily a fly fisherman, Olson wrote
interestingly about many of his fishing experiences
throughout his life, whether they be on rivers, streams or
lakes.
So some years ago when I first had the
opportunity to fish the Namekagon, it was somewhat of a
pilgrimage for me to be on the river. I fished above
Hayward near the town of Cable. The Namekagon is difficult
to wade in that particular stretch; in some places, it's
almost impossible. Prior to the two or three years I went
there, the stream had experienced drought conditions and
above-average water temperatures, and local fishermen told
me they thought the river had had a higher trout mortality
than generally thought. Most of the local fly fishermen
fished the river very early in the morning or late in the
evening, starting in the evening when it was almost too
dark to see. They would move to the top of a chosen riffle
stretch while there was still enough light to negotiate
wading, and then fish the stretch from one location with
large streamers in search of lunker brown trout. I myself
fished the river traditionally during the daytime, and
caught my trout on dry flies. The locals thought this
interesting and rather amusing, though they were
respectful. I didn't catch many trout and they weren't very
big, but each fish was a treasure to me and I was very
happy fishing there regardless of my catch. The heavily
wooded pine forests along the river give it a slightly
acidic aspect, and the water has a reddish tint to it
common in that circumstance.
One local fisherman I had the
opportunity to visit with on two or three occasions had a
most interesting fishing life, as interesting in a fashion
as anyone I'd heard of or spoken to before. He was
thirty-eight years of age at the time and taught highschool
history in a town about ninety miles from Cable. He had a
tall, angular, rather chiseled look about him and a quiet,
confident demeanor, obviously a good fisherman. He said he
had been married for some years and that he and his wife
had no children "by choice." His wife didn't work because
"she didn't have to." Fair enough.
Their summer home was on the Namekagon
River and could not be seen from the water or the road to
the driveway, and the home had recently been secured
electronically. He said they'd never had any prowlers
around the house, but thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to
install some security as they were never there during the
winter months. The summer home was a "year-round" house
however, apparently as comfortable as their regular home,
according to my friend.
Every year since they'd acquired their
summer home, they had a tradition of leaving for the house
on the Namekagon on the last day of the school year. The
pickup was loaded up and ready for the trip, and his wife
picked him up after school on that last day of the teaching
year. He didn't even stop at the house in town on the way
out. They stayed at the summer home all summer long, and
went back "home" on the day before he had to begin his next
teaching year. He told me that on that last day on the
river, he usually fished until dark before leaving, and
when he got back to the river home, his wife had everything
packed up and ready to go. I asked him how he was able to
start school without having to go in a week or so earlier,
like most teachers. He replied that some years back he'd
requested a special dispensation to do so from the local
school board, and that they had approved his request. In
the spring, in addition to his regular teaching duties, he
worked nights and weekends to prepare for the fall school
term, and when he walked into his classroom that first
autumn morning, everything was entirely prepared, including
three weeks of study plans, text books, classroom student
name lists and "sharpened pencils." The school board opened
up his program request to all employees interested, and the
first year three other teachers followed suit. The second
year only one teacher repeated the option, and after the
third year he was the only employee to continue the
program. For most people, the extra workload required in
the spring and the stress of beginning so abruptly in the
fall wasn't worth the effort. But at the time we spoke,
he'd been doing it himself for twelve years.
During the summer, he fished every
day, generally on the Namekagon, which he knew very
well, though on occasion he fished other area rivers and
streams. His wife was a great reader and enjoyed that
wonderful pastime during the summer months on the river.
She did most of the grocery shopping and errand running,
and my friend rarely left the cabin except to fish. His
wife had overnight guests quite often and liked to
entertain. About every two weeks she'd go home for a night
or two to check on their house, the mail or perhaps attend
a summer event with family or friends. But he thought
mainly she just liked to get away from the cabin now and
then for a refresher. He enjoyed their summer home guests
as well as she did, but he'd established a few interesting
ground rules concerning company. First of all, he would not
teach anyone to fish. Friends were welcome to go along with
him on his outings, but they had to go when he was ready to
go, leave when he was ready to leave, go where he wanted to
go, and fish under their own auspices with their own
tackle. He said he was a teacher nine months of the year
and preferred to teach absolutely nothing over the summer.
If their guests did not include fishermen, which I took to
generally be the case, he came and went as the spirit moved
him. He said he rarely made it back in time for evening
barbeques or things of that nature, and usually fended for
himself when he returned from the river.
He also said that he tied all of his
trout flies during the summer and kept all of his fishing
tackle at the summer residence, hence the recent security
measures. He always had enough flies tied by the time they
left at summer's end to get started fishing again the
following season. Then he tied flies all summer long as
needed, sometimes when it rained or at times simply
whenever he felt like it. Once they returned home in the
fall, he did absolutely nothing concerning fishing and had
no tackle there to do it with, even if he wanted to. That
was the plan they had established as a married couple, and
he said it had worked for them thus far.
During the school year, they lived what
might be called a more "normal" existence. He said they
were involved in a number of school and community
activities and enjoyed them a great deal. Many of their
community activities involved working with children,
perhaps because they had none of their own. These
activities were in addition to his teaching duties. It was
almost as though he had a dual existence of sorts, nine
months of the year being spent in one fashion and three
months in another.
I asked him how it was that first day
back at school teaching after a whole summer of daily
fishing. He replied that it was incredibly difficult,
almost beyond description. All he could see was water. The
initial fishing deprivation was hard to manage and the
worst of that lasted about a week. The second week was
better, however, and by the third week he said that
generally the river had worked itself out of his system and
he was comfortably back to his new routine.
During that first three weeks of work he
mentioned that if he actually had fishing tackle at home,
he'd probably not be able to stand it and would go out
fishing again, as the fall fishing season was still open.
That's why he kept everything at the summer home.
Sigurd Olson had an unusual drive for
long canoe trips into wilderness areas, some of which
lasted for many weeks. Zane Grey, another great traveler
and author, had that same craving for long, extended
fishing trips world-wide. My friend from the Namekagon
seemed to have struck a compromise of sorts which was
working out well enough for him.
So wherever we fish, we have wonderful
memories of the actual fishing, the landscapes surrounding
the water we fish, our traveling adventures en route or of
friends we meet along the way, all of which embellish the
waters and add to our total experience. Such is the nature
of the Namekagon River for me. I like to think my
acquaintance is on the Namekagon River at this very moment,
taking care of important business there.
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