The Woods

A Reflection on the Fire

Some call it Brush, others the Bush. I call it the Woods.

I love the woods.

I contemplated this love as I listened to the recent news of a large wildfire at the end of the Gunflint Trail.

I love the Northeastern Minnesota woods. I love its surprises.

Sometimes I enter the official wilderness. Other times I enjoy instead 'the woods'. Sometimes - hiking in a majestic stand of towering pine, these primeval beauties suddenly line up in neat rows. I'm in a Civilian Conservation Corp planting of the 1940s - seemed like a wilderness. I realize these majestic beauties are hardly older than me. Oh yes, a few are older, but they are rare like an elderly man in a Senior Citizen's High-rise.

Other times I will blacken my legs climbing over ancient charcoal stumps. Evidence of fire.

This lonely land can muddle your mind. During time in the Boundary Water Wilderness, I often remind companions this lonely wilderness once served as the superhighway of the North American Continent.

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Originally uploaded by cageyj.

I hiked to the site of Fort Charlotte at the western end of the Grand Portage. Voyageurs travel it longer than our Macadam Roads have existed. It was a busy place. Now it seems untouched.

A newspaper lamented the fire-burned area as a "wilderness largely pristine but wounded." "In some sections the birch, spruce and jack pine stand postcard-perfect." In other places fire has destroyed the land.

Most of our 'ancient' forests are about 100 years - old. Within 5 years the burnt-land will be a tight-knit stand of saplings. After 20 years we will be able to walk under the trees. Thirty years of now, we will see the 'ancient' forest again.

We lost no life. We learned how to better protect human property. We have begun renewal on another section of the woods and wilderness I love.