Calvin Rutstrum

Calvin Rutstrum (October 26, 1895 – February 5, 1982) was an American author who wrote fifteen books, most relating to wilderness camping experiences and techniques. Most of his books were written at his cabin on Cloud Bay, Ontario.

"His wilderness experiences begin just before WWI and span the modern era including the environmental movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. He published his books starting in 1946 and continued to publish right up to near his death in 1982. ...Throughout his life he lived many experiences and held several jobs.....his writing skills were primarily self-taught from reading....Many of these jobs he held just long enough to set himself up for some time in the wilderness. Many of his wilderness years were spent wandering the Canadian Shield or the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota on long canoe, walking, or sledding trips. Over the course of his life he also maintained or built several residences-Canadian and Minnesota cabins, a Marine-on-St. Croix home and a New Mexico ranch home."

Rutstrum was born in Hobart, Indiana on October 26, 1895, a son of Swedish immigrants. Within 3 years they had moved to Chicago, and then St. Paul, Minnesota. His father died of pneumonia when he was about three years old. Rutstrum dropped out of school in the seventh grade at age 13. Soon after that he began his working and adventuring life. Though his mother remarried, the family had little money and Rutstrum worked at a wide range of odd jobs, some of them entrepreneurial, at a very young age. At the same young age he also sought to maximize his time exploring and playing in his neighborhood's hardwood forest.

Rutstrum was also drawn to the Mississippi River. Before the age of 12 he had spent weeks traveling on it with his friends, often riding log booms. As he wrote later, there we was:

"a healthy young animal with less than a dozen years from birth, alive in the early summer sunshine, barefooted, youthfully entranced, eager as spring for life, as intrinsically a part of the river. I believed, as the waterthrush that foraged at the mouth of Minnehaha Creek, where the rippling current joined the mighty Mississippi...To be free as a wild creature, not having to shoulder human cares, able to climb, run, jump. swim, lie on an embankment in the sunshine—these gave a release to the young spirit that may be perhaps described as primitive, but nevertheless exquisite in the most elemental sense.

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