The unofficial favorite author of Camp Chippewa (after JP) is Sigurd Olson. Oft quoted around the campfire, Olson is a writer who describes the impossible to articulate magnetism of the Northern wilderness. An explorer of many of our own stomping grounds, from the Voyageurs National Park, to the Churchill River and Hudson Bay, Olson provides not a unique perspective, but a familiar one, shared by all those lucky enough to paddle the same waters he did. He makes a case for the importance of nature, for those who prefer the metaphysical over the scientific, and the poetic over the mundane. An excerpt from Olson’s essay “Why Wilderness?”from 1938 can be found here.
