Mastodawn

Anyone else read Sigurd F. Olson’s books?

He helped establish the Boundary Waters at the border of Minnesota and Canada, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Point Reyes National Seashore.

I love his writing and try to revisit his books on a regular basis.

This is one of my favorite passages - from The Singing Wilderness, Chapter 9 - Silence

It was before dawn, that period of hush before the birds had begun to sing. The lake was breathing softly as in sleep; rising and falling, it seemed to me to absorb like a great sponge all the sounds of the earth. It was a time of quiet -- no wind rustling the leaves, no lapping of the water, no calling of animals or birds. But I listened just the same, straining will all my faculties toward something -- I knew not what -- trying to catch the meanings that were there in that moment before the lifting of the dark.

Standing there alone, I felt alive, more aware and receptive than ever before. A shout or a movement would have destroyed the spell. This was a time for silence, for being in pace with ancient rhythms and timelessness, the breathing of the lake, the slow growth of living things. Here the cosmos could be felt and the true meaning of attunement.

I once climbed a great ridge called Robinson Peak to watch the sunset and to get a view of the lakes and rivers below, the rugged hills and valleys of the Quetico-Superior. When I reached the bald knob of the peak the sun was just above the horizon, a flaming ball ready to drop into the dusk below. Far beneath me on a point of pines reaching into the lake was the white inverted V of my tent. It looked very tiny down there where it was almost night.

#SigurdOlson

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Jeff Smith Aug 14, 2025

As I watched and listened, I became concious of the slow, steady hum of millions of insects and through it the calling of the whitethroats and the violin notes of the hermit thrushes. But it all seemed very vague from that height and very far away, and gradually they merged one with another, blending in a great enveloping softness of sound no louder, it seemed, than my breathing.

The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition "Be still and know that I am God," and knew that wihtout stillness there can be no knowning, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means.

One winter night I stood and listened beneath the stars. It was cold, perhaps twenty below, and I was on a lake deep in the wilds. The stars were close that night, so close they almost blazed, and the Milky Way was a brilliant luminous splash across the heavens. An owl hooted somberly in the timber of the dark shores, a sound that accentuated the quiet on the open lake. Here again was the silence, and I thought how rare it is to know it, how increasingly difficult to ever achieve real quiet and the peace that comes with it, how true the statement "Tranquillity is beyond price."

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Jeff Smith Aug 14, 2025

More and more do we realize that quiet is important to our happiness. In our cities the constant beat of strange and foreign wave lengths on our primal senses beats us into neuroticisim, changes us from creatures who once knew the silences to fretful, uncertain beings immersed in a cacophony of noise which destroys sanity and equilibrium.

In recognition of this need, city churches leave their doors open so that people may come off the streets and in the semi-darkness find the quiet they need. I know a great sancturary whose doors open onto one of the busiest and noisiest streets of the world. I go in there whenever I pass, and as the doors close behind me and I look up to the stained-glass windows and in the dusk sometimes hear the muted chords of a great organ, the quiet returns and I sense the silence once more. Beneath that vaulted dome is a small part of the eternal quiet the outside world once knew.

In Winchester Cathedral in England is a stained-glass window dedicated to Izaak Walton, the patron saint of all anglers. In the base of that window are four words that embody the philosophy of all who enjoy the gentle art of fishing and the out-of-doors:

STUDY TO BE QUIET

It is the key to all he ever wrote and thought about. Beside the rivers Itchen and Dove, Izaak Walton fished for peace and quiet, sought the silences and the places where thoughts were long and undisturbed.

Silence belongs to the primitive scene. Without it the vision of unchanged landscape means little more than rocks and trees and mountains. But with silence it has significance and meaning. What would the grand Canyon's blue immensities and enormous depths, its sense of timelessness, be like with a helicopter roaring the length of it?

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Jeff Smith Aug 14, 2025

John Muir said: "The sequoias belong to the solitudes and the millenniums." Those ancient trees, some of them old before the birth of Christ, mature long before the continent was discovered, have among them the stillness of the ages. As such, they are more than trees; their very existence is sobering to short-lived man.

What would the wilderness lake country of the Quetico-Superior be like with the roar of airplane motors and high-powered transportation engulfing it? The charm of a canoe trip is in the quiet as one drifts along the shores, being a part of the rocks and trees and every living thing. How swiftly it changes if all natural sounds are replaced by the explosive violence of combustion engines and speed. At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege.

How much more one enjoys a countryside when walking through it? The sounds of the road, the constant sense of the mechanical detract from the complete enjoyment that means recreation and reversal of the type of experience we are accustomed to in everyday life. So often holidays are merely an extension of the identical influences we seek to escape. The fact that we have changed the scene makes little difference unless there is the compensating fact of quiet.

One does not have to be alone to enjoy silence. It has often been said that the ability to enjoy it with others is the mark of friendship and understanding. Only when people are strangers do they feel obliged to be entertaining. Where there is agreement and appreciation, silence is no bar to mutual enjoyment. When I have been alone in quiet places, I have often wished someone could share it and make the experience even richer and more complete.

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Jeff Smith Aug 14, 2025

How often we speak of the great silences of the wilderness and of the importance of preserving them and the wonder and peace to be found there! When I think of them, I see the lakes and rivers of the north, the muskegs and the expanses of tundra, the barren lands beyond all roads. I see the mountain ranges of the west and the high, rolling ridges of the Appalachians. I picture the deserts of the southwest and their brilliant panoramas of color, the impenetrable swamplands of the south. They will always be there and their beauty may not change, but should their silences be broken, they will never be the same.

/end