RENDEZVOUS AT “LISTENING POINT” – A FRIEND REMEMBERED

I can still recall vividly the rainy Kansas Saturday morning when I turned into the parking lot of the Johnson County Branch Library in Shawnee Mission, and waited a moment for a Barbara Streisand recording to come to an end on my car radio. Gravitating to a particular book shelf featuring outdoor subjects, I discovered a new book titled “The Singing Wilderness” written by a Minnesota author named Sigurd F. Olson. Month by month, it chronicled the change of seasons through a year in the north country of the Border Lakes region, through the eyes of someone who was both a trained scientific observer, and someone whose passion for unspoiled wilderness infused each paragraph. It was the first of what would become a series of six best-selling volumes of non-fiction written with the same sense of place and unhidden love for the natural world. And a canoeist of the first order.

            I found a particular appeal in his 1958 account of his acquisition of a point of land on Burntside Lake, outside the town of Ely, Minnesota where he lived and worked as the Dean of a Junior College. He named the place “Listening Point”, and there he reconstructed an old Finnish trapper’s cabin he had brought to the spot and situated among the white birches and Norway pines in such a way as to disturb nothing – not even a huge glacial rock which was a feature of the lakeside spot. There would be, he determined, no power or phone lines, or other “conveniences” to intrude on the quiet, natural setting the original owner of the cabin might have known in a 19^th century world.

            I first began to correspond with Sig Olson in 1962, after reading his latest offering “The Lonely Land”, and seeking his advice in planning my own canoe trip into the Quetico Superior Wilderness (which was carried out in 1964). During the following years our air-mail friendship continued and I made my first trip to Ely in October of 1974, when I parked my truck camper near their home, and was treated to several days of his wife Elizabeth’s warm hospitality as we awaited Sig’s return from testifying before the U.S. Congress.

            Sigurd F. Olson, I should explain, is recognized by many as the “father of the “Wilderness” concept in our National Park system, and at the time of my visit was engaged in lobbying for creation of the Boundary Waters “wilderness” designation, preserving the thousands of square miles of lakes and waterways lying astride Canada’s “Quetico” preserve in their present pristine form.

            In June of 1975, it became possible to take my family with me on a return to Ely, where Sig and Elizabeth welcomed us almost as their own family. We canoed and portaged in the area, and my ten-year-old son Chris and I joined Sig for a steam bath in his traditional Norwegian Sauna at “Listening Point”, telling stories between repeated trips to the cold lake waters nearby for the required “cooling off plunge”. To our surprise, Sig invited us to sleep for the remainder of our stay – just our family - in the cabin at “Listening Point”, where we shared the ambience and memory-filled intimacy of those ageless log walls, stone fireplace, and unbroken vistas of Burntside Lake.

            On January 13^th, 1982, while snowshoeing on a favorite trail near his Ely home, Sigurd Olson was felled by an apparent heart attack, actively engaged in what he loved to do, in the great outdoors for which he lived. He was 83.  This week, exactly 30 years after his passing, I remember him with the fondest of affections.  For me, “Listening Point” is not just a place and a time, but a piece of my heart.

NOTE: In addition to the books already mentioned, Mr. Olson authored “Runes of the North”, “Open Horizons”, “Of Time and Place”, and “Reflections From the North Country”, as well as a collection of excerpts titled “Wilderness Days”.

Pictured in his writing room in the fall of 1974, Sigurd F. Olson was known to a generation of readers and admirers as a champion of wilderness preservation, serving for many years as President of the National Parks Association, and dozens of advisory boards for National Parks, Monuments and as advisor to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

The cabin at “Listening Point” overlooking the expanse of Burntside Lake near Ely, Minnesota. During most of his adult life, Sig Olson led canoe safaris into the vast wilderness of waterways known as “The Quetico Superior” region, capped off by an exploration of the wild Churchill River country of the Canadian north.

The interior of the “Listening Point” cabin was hung with artifacts and mementos of a life devoted to the natural world the owner loved and worked to preserve.

                                                                                                            All Photos by Al Cooper

WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT BASTOGNE – 1944

Whether a product of “The Greatest Generation” or just a student of history, it is nigh impossible to look back on the historical landscape of 1944-45 without assigning a significant prominence to that clash of great armies Americans call “The Battle of the Bulge”. It is just as impossible to do justice to any kind of overview of that colossal event within the confines of a newspaper-size column. There is though, just enough space for me to admit that in my unfulfilled “bucket list” of pieces of geography I would dearly wish to visit if circumstances permitted would be a Belgian crossroads town near the Luxembourg border known as Bastogne.

            On December 16, 1944, in the relative quiet of an icy-cold, fog-bound winter morning, U.S. Army troops, worn out from months of fighting across the battle-scarred countryside of post-invasion France woke to the sound of Tiger tanks and troop carriers emerging from the “impenetrable” forests of the Ardennes region of Belgium. It was the beginning of what would come to be the largest and costliest land battle of the European War for Americans who had fought their way out of the beaches of Normandy, through the deadly “hedge rows” and to a point virtually within sight of Germany itself. Seduced by their successes, confident of victory, and unwilling to believe the few intelligence reports to the contrary, Allied commanders whose troops had outrun their supply lines and badly needed a rest felt safe in relaxing their vigilance with the approach of Christmas and a need to regroup, reinforce and bring up much-needed replacements.

            In one of his occasional bouts of brilliance, Hitler over-ruled all his field commanders to bring about the secret and remarkable mobilization of nearly 500,000 fighting men, 1,800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces timed to take advantage of the worst winter weather in European history to attack the weakest spot in 100 miles of Allied defenses. What the Germans called “Operation Watch on the Rhine” and what the Allies would forever after know as “The Battle of the Bulge” was on.

            The American units, without any air power to support them in the bitter non-flyable weather conditions were quickly either overrun or surrounded. In the month-long battle we would suffer 89,500 casualties, of whom 19,000 were killed and 47,500 wounded. At the same time, an astounding 23,000 were taken prisoner by the rapidly-advancing enemy, including my friend and colleague, Lt. Clayton Jordan who would use his last bullet to kill the officer who was taking him prisoner, and would end up in Stalag Luft III as an “incorrigible”. And that brings us to the “Battling B - - - - - - s of Bastogne”.

            The key objective of the German drive, and the lynch pin in reaching their real target – the port of Antwerp -  was the ancient city of Bastogne, where seven roads met and where the men of the 101^st U.S. Airborne waited. Hugely outnumbered and outgunned by four reinforced Panzer Divisions, the Americans were armed mostly with light infantry weapons, and commanded temporarily by a Brigadier General who was an artillery officer.  Running low on food, ammunition and medical supplies, the defenders refused to surrender. General Tony McAuliffe became famous for his use of the word “Nuts” in response to the invitation to surrender from the German commander. The determined resistance to the siege by the men of the 101^st supplied needed inspiration for the men up and down the lines as they awaited the arrival of George Patton’s 3^rd Army, which would help to turn defeat into victory.

            In the end, airpower would seal Hitler’s fate on the battlefields of Belgium and the German Wehrmacht would never recover from the losses suffered in that last great offensive.

Postscript: On Dec. 12, 2011 as this column was being written, the “Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service” was awarded to Augusta Chiwy, a Belgian nurse who is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of wounded Americans in encircled Bastogne, and who was thought until just recently to have died in a later bombing.

 Long lines of captured U.S. soldiers await transport to German POW camps where they will endure unremitting cold and starvation diets until the end of the war in Europe.  The enemy’s reluctance to deal with the problem of prisoners no doubt led to the Malmedy massacre and other atrocities during the “Bulge” campaign.

German Federal Archives

  Brigadier General Anthony Clement McAuliffe, temporary commander of the 101^st Airborne

Division troops at Bastogne in December, 1944.  His inspired leadership won him the respect of his soldiers, a Distinguished Service Medal and the first of two Bronze Stars. His one-word message “Nuts” to the German commander became perhaps the most famous message of the Second World War.  He rose to the rank of full General before retiring in 1956.  He died in 1975 and is buried with his family at Arlington.

U.S. Army photo

Al Cooper’s weekly radio talk-show on Cedar City’s KSUB 590 now in its tenth year on the air can be heard every Monday at 4:00 PM.

A SALUTE TO THE SPLENDIFOROUS SPUD

Between 1500 AD and 1800 AD alone, France suffered through 40 nationwide famines and hundreds more of a regional or local nature. Across the entire face of Europe prior to the 15^th century, more people perished from starvation than any plague or combination of natural disasters, and few countries even came close to having the ability to feed its own people.  In his 2011 book “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created”, Charles C. Mann paints a grim picture of life in the most advanced countries of the world prior to the agricultural revolution unleashed by that inspired Italian’s voyage of discovery.

            If we were to select one of the plethora of fruit and vegetable cultivars brought back by Spanish ships as the one which did the most to save the world from starvation, it would have to be the lowly potato – that ubiquitous tuber we take so often for granted; the splendidly-unbecoming “spud”.  First grown by the ancient inhabitants of Peru in a high altitude environment which defied conventional agriculture, and then distributed across much of South and Central America through its literal clones in thousands of varieties, the humble potato produced large and predictable crops of nourishing and storable food staples which changed life dramatically, encouraging the development of stable communities where a nomadic lifestyle would otherwise have been the norm.

            A member of the poisonous nightshade family and laced with the chemical solanine, the Aztecs learned to rub the otherwise dangerous wild potato with an edible clay whose composition counteracted the toxins just below the outer skin; a condition which was largely bred out of the potato over time. Called papas by the ancient Peruvian gardeners, the tuberous fruit was carried to Europe on Spanish ships, where it was erroneously called the “Virginia” potato. The “New World” transplant did well on European soils where its productivity is believed by historians, not only to have saved millions from starvation, but to have saved billions from a life of poverty.

            Nowhere did the arrival of the potato have a greater impact than in Ireland, in whose harsh rainy climate and poor rocky soils the potato thrived. What’s more it did well even in the back yards and tiny gardens of commoners, where adult male workers are believed to have consumed up to ten pounds per day per person! As a consequence, the dependence upon and the importation of grains fell off even as the population grew.

            All of this spawned a new agricultural industry whose hunger for fertilizer made guano, accumulated over the centuries from seabird nesting places, a valuable commodity: (13 million tons in 40 years.)  It was probably a shipload of guano from Peru which carried a micro-organism known as Phytopthoria infestus to Europe in the summer of 1845, first appearing as a potato killer in Belgium, from whence it would quickly travel to Ireland where three fourths of that year’s crop would turn brown in death, with an even larger incidence of blight in the two following years. By the end of the three-year blight, Ireland would lose two million to a combination of starvation and immigration to North America. Even to this day, that country’s population remains lower than it was 150 years ago.

            The potato was slow to find a welcome here in the U.S. where it was disdained as a “poor man’s food” for a full century. It was Rev. Henry Spaulding who was doing missionary work with Indian tribes in the Snake River Valley who introduced the “Irish potato” to Idaho where it was destined to define that state’s agriculture.  And for Luther Burbank who sold his patent on the “Burbank Russet” for two hundred dollars, that sale would launch his career as America’s pre-eminent plant breeder and establish the “Idaho” type potato for ever after. 

            Nick-named for the shovel, or spade, with which it was once dug from the clinging soil, the splendiferous spud has traveled from the peaks of ancient Peru to dining tables across the globe as one more of Christiforo Columbus’ gifts to the world.

 

At one time, more than 5000 varieties of potatoes were grown in the Andes Mountains. It is still possible today to experience a great diversity of size, color and taste in “spuds” of the modern world.

THE GIFT

This will be my 78^th Christmas, and as I think back over the unwinding years, I am aware that my greatest treasures are to be found in family, friends and an overflowing legacy of wonderful memories; that the fancily-wrapped and colorful packages ordinarily found beneath a Christmas tree count for relatively little in the long view of things. They are, of course, part of a set of traditions that should remind us that the acts of giving and receiving should be intrinsic to a life well lived. While it is difficult to remember specific gifts, there is one which touched my life so deeply that it remains resolutely unforgettable.

            A cold Siberian wind blew snowflakes into my tent as our Squadron mail clerk knocked and entered, bearing in his gloved hands a sizeable brown paper-wrapped parcel. “You must have friends in high places Sergeant; I don’t know how someone managed to break all the shipping limitations with a box that weighs twenty-four pounds!”

            It was December, 1952 and we were days away from the 20^th Christmas of my life, my principal companions at this time the nine other G.I.s who were my tent mates, surrounded by the roar of non-stop gun fire and the intense cold of a Korean winter north of the 38^th Parallel. The mysterious box proved to be loaded with every conceivable kind of gourmet food item, from smoked oysters and anchovy-wrapped capers to imported Italian sausages and tins of Russian caviar, along with more mundane but equally welcome biscuits, cakes, candies and cookies. And a beautiful Christmas card signed: “John Showalter, Rochester, Minnesota”. Tears still come to my eyes at the memory, more than 60 years afterward, not because of the caviar, but because of the story behind the unexpected gift.

            With my orders to East Asia stuffed in a pocket of my B-4 bag along with leave papers, I was standing just outside the main gate of Sampson AFB in western New York State with my eyes facing north and my hopeful thumb extended. After 18 months of making this 250 mile journey, I was an experienced hitch-hiker with time-proven travel strategies. Even if lucky, the trip would take at least ten hours and require a dozen or more generous drivers to negotiate the numerous towns and cities through which I had to thread my way. Heading home for the last time from a U.S. base, I was surprised when a car traveling along NY Rte. 96A toward Geneva almost immediately stopped. It was a shiny newly-minted De Soto sedan with a well-dressed middle-age man behind the wheel. When asked about my destination, I mentioned the city of Auburn, knowing from long experience that it was best to use “leap frog” tactics in wending my way across the width of largely rural and suburban New York State before the age of Interstate thruways.

            “That will work out fine for me”, the traveler said, “Auburn it is”.

            It wasn’t long before I learned that my companion, whose name was John, owned a bottling company in Minnesota and was between sessions in a week-long business convention and was out to see the Finger Lakes Region. In time, he learned that my eventual destination was actually in Central Vermont and that I was on my way home for the last time before shipping out for Korea.

            After an hour of warm and spirited conversation, and as we were approaching the town of Auburn, John asked me to pull out a folded road map from the car’s glove box, open it up and point out Randolph, Vermont – my home town. He thought for a few moments before speaking again.

            “I have an idea. I’m on my own for two days with nothing in particular to do, and I’ve never seen New England. What would you think if instead of dropping you off in Auburn we just kept going?”

            Thus began an eight-hour interlude which I could never have imagined, and an act of unmitigated kindness which blessed not one, but two lives. By the time we pulled up at the end of the farm driveway in Brookfield, Vermont, after 250 miles and a memorable steak dinner with all the trimmings in Albany, there was hardly a detail of either life which had not been warmly shared and heartily discussed. And a “greenhorn” of nineteen had been nourished by a brief friendship which would never be forgotten. That was the real gift, of which the unexpected Christmas box which somehow found me months later in faraway Korea was only a reminder. To this day I still don’t know how he tracked down my exact location. Sadly, and despite several attempts to reach him in later years, I was never able to say the personal thank you that still rings like a Christmas bell in my heart.

            Wherever you are in the Great World beyond this one John Showalter, THANK YOU from the bottom of my still-remembering heart!  And. . . MERRY CHRISTMAS 2011!