Mountain man of Anoka County

Jon Olson, the Anoka County division manager known as Man Who Walks Like a Bear, rides a mule, makes his own buckskin clothes and built a 16 1/2-foot-tall teepee in his basement.

A civil engineer who oversees county public services that include transportation issues, Olson prefers wagon trains. He is one of 700 certified American Mountain Men. In his seventh-floor office in the Anoka County Government Center, he keeps the saddle he built nearly 25 years ago by using a thick, forked tree branch wrapped in rugged leather as its base.

He starts fires without matches, slept outside an entire summer and is a full-blooded Swede who knows American Indian sign language.

"I grew up in the early era of TV and I think watching Daniel Boone had a great influence on me," said Olson, 60. "As a kid, I'd put up a lean-to by an apple tree, make a fire and sleep outside. All summer. By myself."

He spent his formative years on the family farm in Bird Island, in south-central Minnesota, in the woods with a BB gun. At 10, he had his own .22 rifle, had taken gun-safety courses and was hunting pheasants. By 13, he was deer hunting with a 30.06.

When he graduated from high school in 1967, the last place he wanted to be was a big metropolitan area. So he went to North Dakota State University in Fargo to study civil engineering. By the time he was 20, he was convinced he'd found the woman of his dreams -- Sue, his high school sweetheart. They were married between his junior and senior years.

He had a wife he adored and a good job in St. Cloud, where he could easily get to favorite hunting spots near Brainerd. Jon and Sue adopted a 3-week-old baby, Jessica. Life was a fairy tale, a lot better than any Daniel Boone TV script.

Devastated, Jon turned to relatives to help with Jessica, then 4. But his was not the only home within their family with a broken heart to mend.

One of Jon's cousins, Daniel Nielsen, died in a deer hunting accident. The summer after Sue died, Jon and Jessica and his cousin's widow, Carolyn, and her two boys shared sorrows and hopes at a family reunion.

"Yes, I know it's the ultimate redneck cliché, but I met my wife at a family reunion," Olson said.

He and Carolyn have been married 28 years. He'd gained a loving bride and two wonderful young sons, Kyle and Scott. But he decided to abandon something else he loved -- hunting -- knowing that it might stir up painful memories for Carolyn.

He read, instead. He devoured "The Book of Buckskinning" and upon finishing it was convinced "I could do this."

Olson bought some leather, 50 to 60 yards of canvass at Ax-Man surplus store and a sewing machine "and sewed myself a teepee."

He'd take the teepee to rendezvous events, showing it off at seven to nine of these reenactments a year. Outside the teepee, the Olsons discovered a new world. The kids were introduced to knife and tomahawk throwing, and shooting. Kyle was keenly competitive and ranked among Minnesota's best knife-throwers and shooters, Olson said. But, more important, the rendezvous events drew the family together in a way none could have conceived.

"The kids overcame a lot of the hurts of their youth," Olson said.

And Olson was given a new name. In the world of rendezvous, someone is always ready to give names. When Olson was seen hunched over, carrying a large box of materials to his car, he was christened "Man Who Walks Like a Bear."

Hitching his wagon train

"Why doesn't somebody organize a six-car wagon train that moves across the county, east to west?" Olson asked County Administrator Terry Johnson and Board Chairman Dennis Berg.

He didn't wait for an answer.

"Why don't I do it?" he said.

Jane Leonard, who was the executive director of the state's sesquicentennial celebration, has another idea. After seeing the success of the Anoka wagon train, she asked Olson if he'd put together another one, this time for the state. "He knows his wagon trains backwards and forwards," said Leonard, president of Minnesota Rural Partners.

Olson recently celebrated 25 years of work with the county. Along with the saddle, his office is decorated with pictures of people and animals navigating rugged terrain, and photos of his mules.