Open Horizons
- Nov 20, 2020
- 4 min read
★★★★★
Open Horizons, originally published in 1969, is as close to an autobiography as Sigurd F. Olson ever wrote. It was, as Olson states in the opening acknowledgments, conceived by his long-time publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. Though I haven’t read all the books that came before, I have read his first, The Singing Wilderness, a collection of adventures and observations about the North Country organized by season. The others, Listening Point, The Lonely Land, and Runes of the North, though shifting their focus or casting their gaze more intently hither and thither, appear to follow the same playbook. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: Olson has a keen eye and a way with words that is both poetic and plainspoken, easily drawing the reader into his world, and creating a sense of awe and connection to him and with the place he cared about so deeply.
Olson’s books were highly successful and Knopf could have easily continued to publish new collections of his writings at regular intervals. Instead, they must have recognized the opportunity for Olson to create something bigger in scale, grander in scope, more compelling in depth and feeling than the folky, if erudite, cabin classics he was already famous for. How right they were. To be certain, Olson’s writings are infused with a love of the land and veneration for wild places, but it is here, in Open Horizons, where this deep feeling and connection transcend into universality.
Just as in his own life, it takes the story a long time to get there. As Olson says in the tenth chapter (of 11), “When I first came to the Quetico-Superior, I had not thought about conservation.” Along the way, we learn how he was shaped by wilderness and by others connected to that wilderness, how education deepened that connection, how traveling and exploring places near and far broadened his horizons, and how the rapid modernization in the wake of World War I and the potential encroachment it made possible awoke him from the assumption that “things would never change, or that there were threats which might despoil the wilderness.”
So, it is here, in the final two chapters, where Olson’s journey from thoughtful, observant, passionate lake country explorer to ardent, philosophical, outspoken conservationist is realized. It is in these final two chapters where Open Horizons transforms from a highly readable biography to an environmental call to arms. Olson is no finger-pointing indicter, however. These final chapters aren’t devoted to shaming and calling to account. Rather, he asks us to “wonder about the purpose of man and what constitutes a good society” and to consider “what kind of a world do we want, involving man’s whole relationship to the earth, what he does to it and how he feels about what he has done.” His words and the passion with which he conveys them are immediate—and given that they were published more than fifty years ago—incredibly prescient, and, sadly, still as timely as ever.
The final 34 pages are chockablock with profoundly quotable passages; each one seems fitting as the best way to finish this review. I will, however, end with this one, the one that seems the most foretelling, the most predictive of the path we would take in the years since it was written, the one that could have been written in 1969 or 1980 or 1999 or yesterday, the one that speaks the bluntest truth about us as a country and as a people—even more so in light of the recent presidential election and the lengths to which some will go to distort truth and undermine democracy and the millions who would follow such madness: “Americans have a history of never moving unless confronted with a major disaster. We are now faced with one of greater proportions than the world has ever known, and for the first time are becoming concerned.”
More than 50 years later, to our peril, not enough of us are “becoming concerned.” Instead, we have aligned ourselves on ideologically opposing sides, debating the health and fate of the planet. Rest assured, regardless of what we choose to do or not do, whether we are guilty or innocent of the world we have created, the planet will survive. What life is like for this generation or the next or the one after that—not to mention the millions of non-human species that must bend to, and suffer from, our will—does not appear to be something enough of us give a shit about. “There are those who believe we can have our high technology, continue at the same pace, and still preserve our world. I doubt this will be possible. The only alternative is to reverse our dominant attitude toward the earth and in our use of it recognize that man is part of nature, and that his welfare depends as it always has and always will on living in harmony with it.”
What else is there to say? Only this, “If we can develop love and stewardship, we can look forward to the future with hope and confidence. If we look at our land with reverence, our great knowledge could mean an age of happiness and peace. This is our greatest task, for unless we meet our ecologic crisis and solve its problems as thinking men, there will be nothing to plan for, no utopia, no paradise to regain. If we are able to do this, to look at the earth, not as pioneer explorers, but through enlightened eyes, only then will the full measure of our evolution be realized.” We can be better, do better, live better, treat one another better, gain and grow, achieve and thrive. We can do all these things and more, but it must come from a place of love and compassion, of curiosity and openness, of wonder and awe, in the powers and mysteries, strengths and bonds of fellowship with one another, with all the living creatures of the earth, with the earth itself. As Olson concluded, “If we can move into an open horizon where we can live in our modern world with the ancient dreams that have always stirred us, then our work will have been done.”
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