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Bound for the Barrens
By Jean Sanford Replinger
Back in 2012, a full century after Ernest Oberholtzer and Billy Magee paddled a 2,000 mile journey to Hudson Bay, the Foundation created in Ober’s name published his journals from that trip. Here you will read more of Oberholtzer’s writing than ever before in a humble, understated account of what was actually a harrowing season of paddling— two men in one canoe. From late June to early November they paddled, and nearly every day Ober described the flora and fauna, the map— existing or not— and their patterns of travel in the far northern barren lands. It took one hundred years for his words to make it into print. And in this volume you will also read a lengthy afterword by Professor Robert Cockburn of the University of New Brunswick, selected comments about this trip made by Ober and others, a story of a notable return by Robert Hilke, and the “journey of the journal” written by this book’s editor, Jean Sanford Replinger of Marshall, Minnesota.
Keeper of the Wild
By Joe Paddock
Biographer, Joe Paddock, drew upon correspondence, oral histories, notebooks and photographs of the life of Ernest Carl Oberholtzer (1884 to 1977). “Ober” as he became known in the north country, is one of the great unsung heroes of the wilderness preservation movement of the Twentieth Century. Paddock takes us through Ober’s life in Davenport, Iowa, his mysterious draw to the northland and his Rainy Lake projects and canoe trips, and his unfolding life on Mallard Island. All the while, Ober was traveling to work with policy makers in the nation and state to bring to fruition the federal protection and guiding rules for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We learn of the role that the Anishinaabe played in not only guiding Ober through the rivers and lakes of the northland but in maintaining his home on the Mallard and motivating his work. There is no better place to learn about this wilderness advocate, violinist, book-collector and storyteller than in this 342-page biography. Paddock lives and writes in his home of Litchfield, Minnesota.
