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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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