Singing Wilderness Book

"The Singing Wilderness" is notable both for Sigurd F. Olson's writing and for Francis Lee Jaques' illustrations. Published in 1956, the author's essays describe the wild country of northern Minnesota and nearby Canada. A glance at some of the titles of Olson's chapters, which are organized primarily by season, can give you a sense of the range that he covers: "The Winds of March," "Smell of the Morning," "The Way of a Canoe," "Forest Pool," "The Red Squirrel," "Pine Knots," "Smoky Gold," "Coming of the Snow," "Wilderness Music," and "Skyline Trail," among others. I think that the author is especially good at describing remote country. For example, in his chapter entitled "Silence," he writes of one cold winter night "...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..." (p. 131). Francis Lee Jaques' illustrations add their own vividness to Olson's writings: Jaques' black-and-white drawings of birds, lakes, trees, animals, and other subjects are finely detailed and fun to look at. The combination of words and illustrations makes "The Singing Wilderness" an enjoyable book about the natural world.