Getting The Wilderness In You

Rolf Skrien is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable local historians about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness located on the U.S.-Canadian border in Minnesota. This area, known simply as the Boundary Waters, lies on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior at the beginning of the Gunflint Trail. Rolf spent a lifetime connecting people to the wilderness. His motto is to expose people to raw nature by “getting the wilderness in you,” and he has lived his life believing that “man cannot make the wilderness, but the wilderness can make the man.”
Arriving in the Gunflint Trail area in the 1940s, Rolf learned the country while he paddled many of its five thousand lakes and guided with the Indians. He originally lived on Sea Gull Lake, and started one of the first full-service canoe outfitting businesses, aptly called the Way of the Wilderness.