Sigurd Olsen: “Reflections from the North Country”
A Reading In Honor of Gordon Hall III – Kate Z. and Greg Shute
“Human history is woven into waterways, for not only did they live beside them, but they used them as highways for hunting, exploration, and trade. Water assured their welfare, its absence meant migration or death, its constancy nourished their spirits. A mountain, a desert, or a great forest might serve their need of strength, but water reflects their inner needs.
There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a person is part of their canoe, they are part of all that canoes have ever known.
As long as there are young people with the light of adventure in their eyes and a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run.
Joys come from simple and natural things: mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water.
And so when we talk about intangible values remember that they cannot be separated from the others. The conservation of waters, forests, soils, and wildlife are all involved with the conservation of the human spirit. The goal we all strive toward is happiness, contentment, the dignity of the individual, and the good life. This goal will elude us forever if we forget the importance of the intangibles.
Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity, an antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium. The decisions are ours and we have to search our minds and souls for the right answers… We must be eternally vigilant, embrace the broad concept of an environmental ethic to survive.
I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.
While we are born with curiosity and wonder and our early years full of the adventure they bring, I know such inherent joys are often lost. I also know that, being deep within us, their latent glow can be fanned to flame again by awareness and an open mind.
Life is good to those who know how to live. I do not ever hope to accumulate great funds of worldly wealth, but I shall accumulate something far more valuable, a store of wonderful memories. When I reach the twilight of life I shall look back and say I’m glad I lived as I did, life has been good to me.”
KZ- Wherever you are Gordy, I’m sure the water level is just right for a fun run down the rapids!
“River” by Bill Staines, chorus
River, take me along in your sunshine, sing me a song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river, you changing old river
Let’s you and me, river, run down to the sea