Jon Benson gets to work in one of his favorite places on Earth.

It’s like a kid who grew up cheering for the Yankees going on to play professional baseball in the Bronx. Though in Benson’s case, his favorite place happens to be the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

“I got introduced to the Boundary Waters at a really young age,” Benson said. “And I often say that I’m fortunate that I get to be what I wanted to be when I grew up, because I knew even early in high school that this is what I wanted to do. And this is where I wanted to be. So, it’s pretty cool to actually get to be what you want to be when you grow up.”

Benson is the assistant district ranger for recreation and wilderness on the Tofte and Gunflint Districts of Superior National Forest. He’s worked for the US Forest Service since 2002. Benson’s career with the Forest Service started in the “swamps of Louisiana” doing forest-inventory analysis. After several years in the South, he took a new position in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula working for the Forest Service, before he started his tenure on Superior National Forest in 2008.

Part of Benson’s current role in and around the BWCA is to interact with the public, including various user groups and their members who do volunteer work inside the wilderness.

“As an extroverted person, I love working with people, and especially groups that want to come up and help to do trail maintenance and that sort of stuff,” Benson said.

Among these user groups is the Boundary Waters Advisory Committee, a grassroots organization that focuses on hiking trail upkeep and maintenance in and around the canoe-country wilderness. The committee appreciates Benson’s ability to work cooperatively to the extent that the nonprofit presented Benson with the Mike Manlove Memorial Award “for his 15 years of partnership and service maintaining BWCA trails.” The award was presented to Benson in October 2023 at the Forest Service office in Duluth.

The award is named after Mike Manlove, a former Forest Service ranger who was a partner of Boundary Waters trail maintenance volunteer organizations in the 1990s and 2000s, according to Martin Kubik, a member of the Boundary Waters Advisory Committee. Manlove passed away in 2007, leaving behind a legacy of effective communication and collaboration in terms of the Forest Service and various user groups near the Boundary Waters.

“In his time with the Forest Service, Mike provided constant devotion to and expertise for establishing wilderness trails in the BWCA,” Kubik said, “assessing trail layouts, performing back-country rescues, and training trail volunteers. Mike readily partnered with trail clearing and maintaining volunteer organizations to lessen the burden on taxpayers.”

The award was presented to Benson by Manlove’s widow, Rebecca. Some of Manlove’s grandchildren as well as Benson’s mother were present for the award ceremony.

“It made my heart feel good to see Mike’s grandkids get to hear stories about Mike all these years later,” Benson said. “It was a really moving ceremony.”

Benson grew up in northeast Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota. His first trip to the Boundary Waters came when he was about 10 years old, according to his father, Art Benson.

Jon’s father has been traveling to the BWCA for approximately 60 years. Along with his core group of paddling friends, Art Benson has fished lakes from the Gunflint Trail to the Ely side of the wilderness, and essentially everywhere in between. Jon’s first trip to the BWCA, with his father and a few family friends alongside, took him to Disappointment Lake. The trip was rather routine in the sense of the fishing was decent and the bugs weren’t too bad. However, the standard reigned supreme in the younger Benson’s mind, and he’d found his place in the world, it seemed.

“He became hooked very early,” Art said of his son’s passion for the Boundary Waters.

After growing up paddling in the Boundary Waters, if only on the annual family trip to the wilderness, Jon has since cataloged a lifetime of memories in the BWCA. He was in the woods just days after the epic 1999 blowdown storm raged across northern Minnesota, toppling some 500,000 trees along the way. Benson was working when the Pagami Creek Fire erupted in 2011, a massive wildfire that put the lives of some of his Forest Service colleagues in danger as it swept across the BWCA.

However, Benson prefers to keep the spotlight of his career on other people. He mentioned several times while being interviewed for this story that the focus should be on the volunteers who work tirelessly and often without any recognition to keep hiking trails clear and accessible in the BWCA.

“I want to thank all the trail partners. The Boundary Waters Advisory Committee with Martin (Kubik) and Susan (Pollock) and Lucas (Raudabaugh) and that group… And then our other trail partners,” Benson said. “I mean, just on this side of the forest alone, I just really want to say thanks to all of our hiking, biking, ATV, snowmobile clubs. I think so highly of all these groups and can’t thank them enough.”

Kubik praised Benson for using a “common sense” approach to engaging with various user groups. Kubik said wilderness rangers like Benson who are excited to be working in and around the BWCA are a benefit not only for the Forest Service, but for the public as well.

“Jon’s someone you can talk to when there’s an issue, good or bad,” Kubik said. “Communication goes such a long way, and that’s one of Jon’s strengths. It’s a pleasure to work with him on these things that impact people coming to the Boundary Waters.”