I must admit I am a romanticist. I grew up being infatuated with famed woodsmen like Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett, and fictitious characters like Arny, the grizzled frontiersmen in the book INDIANFUR. Nowadays when I watch shows on TV about hunting, fishing, and the great outdoors all I see are fast bass boats and expensively dressed gunners hunting pen-raised birds on a game farm. Are these the outdoors men of today?

I may be overly critical, but the outdoors and the great men and women who challenged it hold a place in my heart. These are the ones that knew the wood intimately and became a part of it. I used to pattern almost everything I did after them. I joined Boy Scouts so I could learn to set up a neat camp, start a fire with wet wood, cook a meal over a fire, sleep on the hard ground, and other wood lore. My father and older relatives taught my cousins, brothers and I the ways of ducks, deer, and other game animals with pride.

When I grew older the fun really began, for that was when us youngsters began trips on our own. Oh man, I remember the minor disasters, flooded out camps, burned meals, and frightening nights as large sounds came from the surrounding woods with nothing but a tent and sleeping bag to protect us from fangs and claws.

One fall a friend and I spent several days in the woods with nothing but two shotguns, shells, a frying pan, and two sleeping bags. Suddenly a missed shot became more than irritating, it meant growling stomachs. Thanks to some grouse, squirrels, and one rabbit we survived the trip. Although after many days with no sugar our first stop was at a Dairy Queen where we each spent about $10.00.

It seemed like no one I knew could afford a motor or much of a boat. We were all destined to spend our lives paddling canoes every time we fished or decided to see some new country. There were times when I looked down a long stretch of river or found white caps seething across a lake and vowed never to get in a canoe again. To pick me up I’d dream I was with Lewis and Clark on the Missouri or Daniel Duluth as he explored Lake Superiorand the romance would return.

One outdoor writer that truly earned his stripes was George Washington Sears, better known by an Indian pen name, Nessmunk. He lived in the late 1800′s and was perhaps the last true outdoor educator. As a boy he ran the woods and lakes near his home inMassachusettsand was befriended by an Indian that taught him the way of the woods. Later, Nessmunk spent countless nights sleeping on a browse bed under the stars. He taught camp lore and how to live in the wilderness with nothing more than an oil cloth and a double-bitted ax.

A great outdoors man of our time was Minnesota writer, Sigurd Olson. This remarkable man knew the woods on a personal basis like no other man I know of. Fortunately this man left his legacy in a series of books. We can all enjoy the read and feel what he felt, as he canoed the lakes and river of northern Minnesota along with other wilderness areas.

After reading of these outdoors men of the past, along with my own experiences, I can’t help but snicker at those who obtain a metal-flaked boat or laptop and suddenly become a “professional outdoors man.” I do not intend to aggrandize myself because I have had a metal-flaked boat of my own with enough modern electronics to track a satellite. But I love the wilderness for what I have learned from it, not what I can take from it. There is a huge difference!






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