A Private Wilderness

PRAISE

A revelation of Olson’s personal diaries and his struggles to balance his life’s passion — writing about nature, about the outdoors — with his job as a teacher, his responsibilities as a husband and father and his role as a national leader in the growing movement to preserve wild places. — Duluth News Tribune

The first decades of Sigurd Olson’s writing life were filled with frustration and hope, failure and doubt, and finally, publication. The new collection of his journals from this painful and formative time reveals a writer whose life was defined by the struggle between his calling and his many commitments. — Quetico Superior Wilderness News

While those journal entries were haphazard, often on scraps of paper, usually dated, but sometimes not, they captured [Olson’s] thoughts about the wilderness he loved and how he wanted to be the writer who shared those experiences with readers. — Steve Gardiner

For the voice of a man who spent his life in more familiar wild country, seek out A Private Wilderness. — Minnesota Alumni

There is an innocent romance in Olson’s essays, a sincere touch of the spiritual. — The Wall Street Journal