Calvin Rutstrum (October 26, 1895 – February 5, 1982) was an American writer 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."
Youth
Rutstrum was born in Hobart, Indiana, on October 26, 1895, a son of Swedish immigrants. Within three 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 he 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. At age 16, after acquiring his 30-30 carbine, .22 rifle, fishing tackle, ammunition, tent, bedroll, axe, knife, cook kit, and $25, he spent $24 of that for passage to Montana when he worked at a ranch riding fence in the summers and spent winters in a log cabin (line shack) in the mountains. Rutstrum began his first long canoe trip at age 18, a 100-day trip in the wilderness in northern Minnesota.
Adult life
He served in World War I as a Navy medical corpsman, and as a criminal bank investigator for 10 years, and as a camp instructor and guide. Later he made money by buying and selling land. In the early 1920s Rutstrum bought, subdivided and sold three 40 acre tracts on the northwest shore of Lake Superior. This, combined with his limited lifestyle requirements provided a significant large step towards financial independence, where jobs became superfluous.
Early in his life he lived in a cabin on the Flute Reed river along Lake Superior's northwest shore between Grand Marais and Duluth. His next home was a cabin on an island in Sea Gull Lake, near the end of the Gunflint Trail in Minnesota where he lived for 10 years. Later, as this became too developed for him, he moved to Marchington Lake, about 30 miles east of Sioux Lookout, Ontario. He then built a stone house in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, which became his primary residence, while retaining his Ontario cabin. He also built a home on Cloud Bay, Lake Superior. He intended it to be a "simple little house" but zoning regulations forced it to be more substantial. His wife Florence had been visiting Mexico with her aunt every year, and coaxed Cal to head southwest. Rutstrum and his wife Florence bought an adobe house in Puerto De Luna, New Mexico, in the Pecos River Valley, which they remodeled and modernized. They lived there part-time for seven years in the early 1960s. He decided that life there was unpleasant, and sold it back to its original owners.
