Podcast: Gunflint Falling – Stories from the 1999 BWCA Blowdown

Welcome to Big Red Canoe, the podcast from Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, where we introduce you to captivating people and intriguing stories from America’s Treasured Wilderness. I’m Dave Meier. Grab a paddle and hop on in. Transcribing

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I’m excited today to have on the podcast, boundary waters, author, Carrie Griffith, who we’ll be talking about his new book, Gunflint falling, which is about the 1999. Blowdown in the boundary waters. Uh, cataclysmic straight-line wind storm that cuts straight through the BWC. And continued to carve a path of destruction towards the east coast. This storm was what’s known as a direct show.

With winds in the neighborhood of a hundred miles per hour, covering a broad area up rooting and snapping, countless trees leaving a massive amount of debris on the ground and dramatically altering the landscape and ecosystem the boundary waters.

Just picture being up in a canoe or in camp during that kind of a storm with only tent fabric between you and the howling wind and falling trees.

It was terrifying. I can tell you I was there on a long weekend canoe trip, and I’ll get into that story. When we talked to Carrie about the book here with our executive director, Chris nap in a moment. But for me, reading the book was a gift. It brought back a lot of memories about the blowdown first hearing stories of others who are caught in this unpredictable storm and how their experiences were similar. And I was keenly aware of how lucky my wife, Michelle and I were that we weren’t injured. But what if we had been and how would we have reacted? How did others react when they were cast into a life or death situation?

It’s interesting to hear too, how people were thrown into the role of rescuers. The pilots, camp employees, um, people who are mostly just gearing up for a 4th of July weekend. And in addition to hearing what others were doing during the storm and its aftermath, Carrie Griffith set these stories against the backdrop of climate change. I remember immediately following the blowdown. We weren’t talking about climate change. The big concern was that the down trees would be like a Tinder box waiting to produce massive fires that would burn the boundary waters, maybe so hot with trees on the ground that they would interrupt some of the natural cycles, even ones where trees reproduced with the help of fire. But at the time, I remember being relatively unconcerned about the longterm health of the boundary waters, because I figured nature fixes itself.

And I still do believe that, but I also now realize that in many ways the boundary waters will never be the same as it was before the blowdown. And in a way, because of climate change, that storm likely marks and end of an era and a new chapter in the boundary waters.

 

I’ve already seen climate change in my lifetime. I worked one summer in glacier national park when I was in college and within 10 or 15 years, some of the glaciers that I’d seen on the mountains every day. Have disappeared.

The changes we’re seeing in the boundary waters will be different than that, but no less dramatic. And though it might feel like, well, on average, what’s a couple of degrees, right? But then you look out the window at the winter. We have this year, or think back to the winter of 2012, where the trees thought it was spring and then were damaged when they refroze, when the table is tilted and we’re starting to experience more and more extreme and unusual damaging weather events, we can start to see how red and white Pines might lose ground to other species so that within a hundred years, some parts of the boundary waters may look like Prairie. With climate change, the probability is just higher. Now that those things might happen. And that’s also a part of what we experienced that day on July 4th, 1999. These dramatic human stories appearing against that backdrop of larger change for the boundary waters. Here’s Carrie Griffith with Gunflint falling.

Cary Griffith: When I think about this book, I think about it in two ways. The first is as a prequel to my last nonfiction book, Gunflint Burning Fire in the Boundary Waters that was about the Ham Lake Fire of 2007.

The reason I think of it as a prequel was not only because it happened eight years before 2007, but I first became interested in the blowdown because the people I interviewed for that book. Several of them said, you know, the reason the Ham Lake fire burned so hot and intense and was so destructive was because of all the fuel in the boundary waters left over from the blowdown.

And then they tell me this dramatic story about a friend or about themselves. They were in the, in the in the middle of the blowdown. And I just. Really thought these stories were amazing and I wanted to know more about it. And that was really the, the, the start of it. So I think of it as a prequel to gunflint burning.

But I also think about it as a signal 1 of the a chronicle of 1 of the 1st extreme weather events in climate change, which we’re seeing more and more of

now, back in the 80s, we started talking about climate change. Testimony by the director of NASA’s Institute of Space Studies, James Hansen. He mentioned climate change and said it was going to begin affecting our climate pretty heavily. This was 11 years before the blowdown, and of course the blowdown was 25 years ago from today.

So one of the things that a lot of people don’t know about this, I say this book is an example of one of the first extreme weather events in northern Minnesota. This storm that started in North Dakota,

it actually traveled 6, 000 miles over three to four days. Now, amazingly, In the boundary waters, even though there were 48 million trees felled and some of those trees were 30 40 inches in diameter, big old growth trees. There were no fatalities.

Nobody can believe that. You know, the forest service. Plan for for for fatalities, they told people what to do in case they found people because they fully expected to, but it didn’t. As the storm moved east, it hit southern Canada and it did. Cause a couple deaths, caused a lot of destruction, went out into the ocean, went due south, turned inland at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina blew through Alabama, Mississippi, the Mississippi Delta, and finally after three or four days Burned itself out into the in the Gulf of Mexico.

It traveled 6, 000 miles. So again, another way I think about this book is as a chronicle of one of the first extreme weather events of which we are seeing more and more due to climate change.

Now, I tell a lot of stories in this book about people who were hurt in a store or a handful of them anyway.

One of them happened in Lake Pauley. Now, I think If I remember correctly, Dave, you were in that in the, the Lake Polly area or near there.

David Meier: Yeah, well, actually,

we were. Went in on Bauer trout Lake entry point number 43 and then did about five portages into Swan. And so we saw you know, we weren’t at the center of of the storm trajectory where so many trees were lost, but we saw definitely a number of trees that were, were down. So my wife Michelle and I were in the boundary waters on, on the 4th of July in 1999. We had just gotten married and I had it in my head that, oh, it’d be fun to do kind of a boundary waters honeymoon.

And actually, Carrie, I found it interesting in your book. There was a, a couple that was up there for a, for a honeymoon, and so, but we, we’ve gone on a, a, you know, proper honeymoon. We went to Greece and, and spent all of our vacation time, so. All we had left was three days you know three day weekends to get to the boundary waters.

And so, so we went up there and went in on on Saturday . We, we went about 5 lakes in to Swan Lake. As I said, most of the porches were about 40, 30, 40 rods and 1. Fun thing about that trip was we saw a lot of moose, more moose than I’d ever seen.

So I’ve often wondered if the moose kind of knew something that was up. One thing they did know was was it was really hot. And you mentioned that in your book, Carrie, that just how kind of hot and sticky it was. So we saw, you know, a bull moose with the water over, going over, as he was cooling himself with the with a rack there in the lake.

And then we saw this mama and a calf. And and that was a really exciting thing about the trip on the way in. One other thing about the trip on the way in, my wife had never had, had, well, she’s kind of petite, and I’d only been up there mostly with with my dad, who’s, you know, a 200 pound man we’ll say 190, dad, anyway so.

I packed with one big Duluth pack and then the canoe and Michelle couldn’t carry it. So I was we were double portaging. I was carrying everything, which kind of came into play on the way out. So we got to Swan Lake and we set up. And then I was out the next day fishing and I ended up you know, it’s focused on fishing, caught a fish.

And then all of a sudden, right after that I looked up and I just saw the sky was just green. And just instantly I knew trouble because you hear about green sky being you know, like tornadic activity and, and where some really significant weather trouble can be. So we I, I booked it back to camp.

I saw the storm rolling in and I remember I made the decision to like, well, it’s going to be storming later. Maybe I better clean this fish now fast. So I got, you know, started cleaning the fish, getting it ready for dinner.

And then I got about halfway through and then the winds started blowing so much. Michelle was cruising around the campsite, picking things up, putting them in the tent. And I got about halfway through the fish and I just had to put it down and run for the tent. . And I’ve been in a, a storm once that had flattened my tent and broken the poles when I was in Glacier National Park working there for a summer. And so I was determined that we were not going to let this tent fall down. And so Michelle and I were in the tent holding up the sides of the tent because it was really starting to blow.

And just that tent fabric would just flap, flap, flap, flap, flap right next to our heads. And so we were just, Basically terrified holding this tent up spread out against the one wall so that it wouldn’t fall because it’s a cheap tent with with fiberglass poles and we were in there for what felt like forever.

But it was probably, I don’t know, 45 minutes, an hour, and it still was flapping around. But after that that intense part, we kind of, it just seemed to lighten a little bit. We stuck our heads out of the tent, and that’s when it dawned on me, kind of the significant significance of the storm.

There were two trees, were just pulled the tree down by the root ball right next to the tent. And then looking out towards the lake. A lot of the trees were kind of sheared off, you know, 10, 20 feet in the air and the treetops were just just. Ripped off of the of the of the tree trunks, and we saw that in our campsite there was a process of the storm dawning on us, like the scope of it, but you know, once we. You know, got got through it. I probably cleaned the other half of the fish, getting it ready for dinner and then getting ready to just go back to use the, use the bathroom and just that little trail between the campsite and the pit toilet, we had to climb all the way to the pit toilet over all the trees,

going back into the woods and we, we had one more night and then, you know, our weekend was up, we headed out and all the portages looked like this too, just matchsticks pickup sticks just stacked up about, you know, six, seven, eight, ten feet high, where I had to climb with the canoe over all of the trees.

So I know that also played a role in your book, Carrie, of just all the you know, the portages being blocked and, and having it being difficult. To get to people. Luckily we were able to manage and so fortunately we were not hurt because I was sitting in that tent as I looked out going like, should we have been in the tent?

Should we have been outside dodging trees? You know, what’s the, what’s the right thing to do? And I think with a storm like that, I don’t know if there really is a right place to be for, for something like that. So anyway, we, we’ve fortunately made it out just fine. And with a little bit of extra work and some double portaging over the trees and headed back to Grand Marais, where we checked out at the, at the ranger station.

And again, the scope of this you know. Talking to the ranger, you know, like, Hey you might want to go up up by Swan Lake there. There’s some portages kind of blocked by, by some trees. There was a cell that hit that lake pretty hard. I was thinking it was tornadic activity, having no idea of the, of the scope of the event that we saw.

Cary Griffith: A lot of people said that same thing, Dave, they just, you know, they didn’t, a lot of people in Grand Marais didn’t even know anything happened at the end of the gunflint trail. Yeah,

David Meier: yeah, well, it was fun to read in your book just all the different things that were happening across the Boundary Waters, the tapestry of people and just to hear what other people were doing during the storm, like the director of Wilderness Canoe Base, how he borrowed a chainsaw so he could get back up the Gunflint Trail, and we saw that as we were coming down the Gunflint Trail where there were trees all down, but we could kind of Just get by because people had been through there already by July 5th kind of clearing it out for, you know, what ended up being kind of rescue and cleanup activities.

Cary Griffith: Yeah, it was really the last 20 miles or so of the Gunflint Trail. They got hit the hardest. You know, the Gunflint Trail goes kind of northwest out of Grand Marais and the storm kind of eclipsed that end of the Gunflint Trail. So it wasn’t too bad until you got up to Trail Center. And then it started to go bad.

You know, you asked, like, what can people do? I should mention this. One of the guys I, I interviewed and wrote up his piece for the, the book to be included in it was ranger wilderness ranger, John Pierce. He’s still in Ely, still works for the forest service. Great guy, has a really dramatic, compelling story, but he had 95 that convinced him anytime you go in the boundary waters, in the summer.

Because storms happen in the summer and they always come out of the west, according to John. So anytime you go into the boundary waters, you should always get in an eastern campsite that faces west. Then, if inclement weather comes up or a bad blowstorm, no matter how much it blows, counterintuitively, you run into the storm until you can get to the shoreline.

And then you won’t have to worry about being killed by falling trees, because they’re falling behind you. I thought that was really interesting. I actually wrote that piece up, and because it wasn’t part of the narrative I was trying to tell, I, I had this. Cut it in the end, but it’s his story is going to appear in an upcoming issue of Minnesota conservation volunteer, and it has that lesson in it.

And I would think many of the friends would be interested in that. Less. And I know if I ever go into the boundary waters in mid summer, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to look for an Eastern a Western facing on an Eastern campsite that faces due West someplace. I can get to the shoreline in case bad weather starts coming out of the West.

David Meier: Plus, the sunsets are better, right?

Cary Griffith: Yeah, yes, exactly. Now, what was really one of the, you know, of course, this is a story about the weather. And one of the things that like you, Dave, when you, you went in, did you say the second or the third? I think it was third was a Saturday. You went in on the 3rd and so if you had looked at forecasts, you if you looked at the one that came out of the Duluth National Weather Service, you would have seen they they predicted the 4th of July would be warm and humid with a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms, not nothing to you.

Traumatic. The the weather headquarters of the National Weather Service is in Norman, Oklahoma. They were actually keeping an eye on some storms that were developing in Montana and Western South Dakota, but they didn’t really think it. Would amount to much. They just thought, you know, it would be, it would fizzle out by the time it hit north northwestern Minnesota.

Now, 1 thing I learned about when I was doing research for this book is that there’s 122 regional national weather service stations. The 1 responsible for forecasts and the tracking of the weather. In the northeast of Minnesota is out of Duluth. It’s the Duluth station. The one that’s responsible for northwestern Wisconsin Minnesota, like Bemidji and that whole area is in Grand Forks.

And because weather in the summer comes out of the west, Duluth is always tracking what their sister office is doing in Grand Forks. And they tend to follow the forecasts that come out of Grand Forks. Well, of course, even as late as 7 a. m. on July 4th, the morning, that’s Sunday morning in Grand Forks, they issued a forecast that said, well, you know, it’s going to be warm.

The winds might be 10 to 20 miles per hour, possibly gusty. 45 minutes later, those storms that were being tracked by Norman, Oklahoma, by the headquarters, they said that the phrase they used was the nature of them abruptly changed. And they turned into this intense squall line that blew through Fargo and did all kinds of damage.

Immediately after that, they issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the Bemidji area. And not long after that, of course, then Duluth tracks with it. They see it on their radar and they issue a warning to you know, they say that there could be severe thunderstorms for the Ely area and for the boundary waters.

Now, mind you, this was in 1999. And so, A lot of people were in the Boundary Waters like you were, Dave. They were all, almost all the people I talk about in the book were already in the Boundary Waters. So they had no way of knowing that, hearing the forecasts or the warnings by the National Weather Service, they were just in the Boundary Waters enjoying the Fourth of July.

It was so hot that most people I interviewed were taking dips, swimming, standing under a wilderness shower, whatever it happened to be. So anyway, most of the people I interviewed in the book were completely caught unawares, and there was no anticipation that this significant weather event, the one that traveled 6, 000 miles was going to start right up in northwestern Minnesota.

Now I talk about two wilderness rangers Nicole, Selmer. She was in the wilderness with several volunteers, eight volunteers, and they were working on they were working, yeah, they were working on portages, cleaning up portages between Mudro Lake and Fortown Lake. I mentioned Nicole’s story because she’s really on the north end of the of the store, the main storm trajectory.

Cary Griffith: Nonetheless, she has a powerful story to tell. It’s similar to yours, Dave, in that, you know, you were way south, but you were still hit by significant winds. So was Nicole. And it’s an example of how wide this damage from this storm actually was as it traveled east northeast. I also tell the story of Ranger Pete Weckman, who he went out the morning of the 4th of July.

He heard that there was a chance of thunderstorms. He knew that there was bad weather, but he was going to go up there anyway. And he was going to go up the moose Lake chain. I included his story because he was right in the heart of the storm. And the story he tells about sitting is in his truck. As the storm comes on is really harrowing.

Another interesting thing about this is that the wilderness rangers in the boundary waters are divided into the western region and the eastern region. Bruce Slover was the head of the wilderness rangers in the western region. He was out of Ely. And he had a different philosophy than Joe Barnier, who was his colleague in charge of the wilderness rangers on the eastern region.

Bruce thought the 4th of July would see a lot of people in the wilderness, and so he wanted most of his rangers to be in the wilderness. That’s why Pete Weckman went in that day, and that’s part of the reason why Nicole Selmer was there. Jo thought that most people spent 4th of July at home and that kind of thing, so she didn’t have nearly as many wilderness rangers.

In the wilderness during the blowdown. So it was just kind of an interesting anecdote that I learned when I was doing research for this. Now, 1 of the, the, the groups I talk about, and I like this because it’s. It’s a story that is people can really resonate with. There’s three women.

They had met not too long before they ended up going into the wilderness. Actually, Jan and Vicky had been good friends and they’d taken several wilderness trips and they met Sue Ann Martinson, who was 55. Jan and Vicky were a little younger. And Sue Ann had never been in the Boundary Waters. She’s from the Twin Cities.

She’d always wanted to go to the Boundary Waters. And so Jan and Vicki said, hey, we have done this wonderful route. I’m going to tell you about it in a sec. It’s a fairly Well known route and they said, You should come with us. We’ll we’ll rent one canoe and we’ll head up. And you know, the other thing Vicky like to go with Jan Fiola because Jan Fiola was a gourmet wilderness cook.

So they’d eat really well in the wilderness. And of course, Sue Ann like that. So what they planned on doing is driving up to the end of the Of the trail campground on July 1st and then on July 2nd, they were going to go over to way of the wilderness outfitters, rent a canoe and get their stuff.

And they were the 1st day. They were going to paddle up into Saginaw. And then go down to the southwest and still in Saganaga. Right around there, they camped on an island that first, that first night, July 2nd, then on July 3rd, they wake up and they’re going to portage through Yeah.

Red Rock Lake, which they do. And again, Jan and Vicky are familiar with this because they’ve done it before. And they go through Red Rock Lake and they go into Alpine Lake. And their idea is that on the 3rd, they’re gonna, Saturday the 3rd, they’re gonna go to this one campsite that they like that’s very close to the portage from Alpine into Seagull.

That is a long portage, but it’s the most typical way. People come and go from seagull to Alpine. Now, what’s interesting about this is that. To the right of there, there’s another little portage.

And that’s the one almost everybody after the storm has to take. You mentioned Dave, how the portages were, you know, you had to kind of struggle to get over that Alpine portage, which is about a 5th of a mile long. I want to say was. just devastated. I mean, it was completely choked, just like pickup sticks.

The trees had just fallen across it. In fact, some people that ultimately go in to rescue Vicki Brockman have to haul their canoe 10 feet off the ground, crawling over this windfall that happened to get in, to get in, to help her out. The other thing I wanted to mention about their idea was Vicky Brockman’s idea was we’ll spend 4th of July. At this campsite. And then on the 5th. Monday, we’ll pat, we’ll do the portage into seagull and we’ll paddle out to our car at the parking lot at the end of the seagull lake there and we’ll drive home. That was their plan.

 

We’re going to take a short break here and we’ll be back with Carrie Griffith and more stories of the 1999. Blowdown in just a minute.

With over 1200 lakes and hundreds of miles of trails, it’s no wonder that people spend a lifetime exploring the boundary waters. With so many possibilities, it can be daunting to figure out where to go. Whether you seek adventure, solitude, or want to reconnect with others, friends of the boundary Waters has extensive online resources to help you get the most out of your boundary Waters experience.

Visit www. friends bwca. org slash explore for more information.

Okay, we’re back now. And here’s Cary, with more stories from Gunflint falling.

Cary Griffith: Now, I also tell the story about some 5 friends who go into Lake Pauley.

Oreo, who’s familiar and was kind of the wilderness. He was sort of the leader of the group. Ray knew of this campsite. He wanted to go and stay at on Lake Polly. And so he and his wife, Michelle, they drove up July 1st and the plan was they were going to drive up, score the campsite. And then on Saturday, Christina and Mark Christina and Mark Schwendiger and their friend Lisa Nass were going to follow him in. And sure enough, Ray and Michelle.

Got that on the second. And by the third, they were all in camp. And the idea was they’d wake up the morning of the fourth. They’d have a great day in the woods. And then on the fifth, they’d all reverse down the portages and paddle out and head home.

So here’s what happens right around noon, and I don’t know if Dave it was right around noon for you. I, it was definitely for Vicki Brockman, who was, I think, just about due north of you, but right around noon. They huddle in their tent. All hell breaks loose and it is really significant. And there’s a tree jack pine right behind their thing.

And they’re all 3 of them are huddled in the tent. Vicki Brockman lays on her side and she gets kind of in a fetal position and the tree falls directly on Vicki Brockman’s hip. And it shatters her pelvis. Now obviously, you know, she can’t move. There’s no way she’s going to portage anywhere. The only way they’re going to get her out is to medevac.

All afternoon people are swarming out. There’s a lot of campers on Alpine Lake. That’s in the boundary waters, lots of boundary waters. People go there because it’s felt relatively close and easy to get into.

Lots of campers were in there and they just all started streaming out. So every time somebody went by their campsite, Jan Fiola and Sue Ann Martinson would say, Hey, tell them we’ve got somebody injured here. We have to medevac her out. She can’t move. Same thing with Lisa. In Lisa’s campsite. The blowdown started come through much like I think it did in your campsite.

It didn’t fell everything sort of, it did pretty much fell everything in Vicki Brockman’s, but in Lisa’s campsite, it came through really harsh winds, really strong trees were breaking at a moment in the middle of the storm. Lisa looks down to where her boat. Was pulled up on the shore there and she sees the wind is so strong.

It’s starting to move. She got a really small canoe for her solo and it’s starting to move. It’s a Kevlar. It was very light. It was starting to push it and she was afraid it was going to get lost or it was going to get blown away. And so she ran down to secure it. And once she was down there by the canoe, a tree broke off and the branch grazed her head.

If it had hit her two inches over, it would have crushed her skull as it was in nocturne unconscious. And she was in a world of hurt. Now the Schwendigers, you know, they’re in Lake Pauley and there aren’t as many campsites. There’s not as much traffic. They realize if we’re going to get help our friend, Lisa and us both the Oreos and the Schwendigers thought somebody’s got to go for help.

So the Schwendigers both dis Mark and Christina say, okay, let’s paddle like hell. We’re going to go out the way we came in. They get out to a camp grind campground. Amazingly, their cell phone, they’re able to get coverage. They drive up to a hill. They’re able to get coverage, enough coverage to sell some to tell the authorities that where.

Lisa and us is on this Lake Polly. And they, they actually late in the day, they get a plane in and Medevac or just to Ely. Similarly, Vicky Brockman is, it’s almost getting towards dusk. And the last trip that Pat Lowe. Pilot Pat Lowe takes that day is to pick up Vicky Brockman. You know, in the Forest Service, they’re doing medevacs all day, helping people out from noon on.

They can only go from sundown to sunset. So they were hurrying to get everybody out that they could. And Vicky Brockman was Pat Lowe’s last last plane flight. He takes her to Ely along and lead and his fellow Wayne Erickson, another Bush pilot takes a Lisa to Ely. They both get there within like an hour or two apart.

The doctor examines them both. There’s a small hospital in Ely and he says, wow. There’s nothing I can do for you guys. We’ve got to get an ambulance and rush you down to the trauma one center in Duluth. And that’s what they do. Now, go ahead. Next slide. Now this I think truth is stranger than fiction because both of these people this I didn’t know this at the time when I was interviewing him and all of a sudden they end up in the same ambulance.

Vicki Brockman is really hurt pretty bad, but she’s coherent. She’s conscious. She’s been given some painkillers, so she’s comfortable. Lisa Nas next to her is in and out of consciousness. She is not doing well at all. They both get down to the trauma center. The doctors examined Vicky and they say more or less.

There’s nothing we can really do. We can’t put a cast on you. We can’t operate. You just have to stay put for 7 to 10 days and let your body heal itself. And that’s what they do. And ultimately it works for her. It’s really good, but she just has to be calm. Lisa is very different. The first thing they do is alleviate the pressure on her skull.

And so they kind of have to do some surgery on her skull to in order to do that. She almost dies, but she, she comes out of it. Once they release the pressure and she makes a full recovery to next slide. Now, this slide actually, there’s some reason it didn’t come. This is another Superior National Forest image of the damage.

This includes some of the damage in Ontario as well, but you can see there the boundary waters where it was hit. I say, I, I note a bunch of stuff to the right here by the numbers. The July 4th, 99 blow down happened from approximately noon to 2 o’clock or a little before noon to 2 o’clock over that entire area.

It flattened the B. W. C. A. created a a flattened space 40 miles long and 5 to 10 miles wide. It failed an estimated 48Million trees. You know, damaged 487, 000 acres. And at its peak within the two weeks following the event, there were 310 personnel working on it, and it cost almost a million dollars in those first two weeks you know, trying to get into the forest, save people.

Like I say, they always thought they were gonna find a fatality, but fortunately they didn’t. One other thing I have to mention that I forgot. Is back when I was talking about the extreme weather event, seldom does a derecho happen at the latitude that this derecho happened. And it’s another example of climate change.

Most derechos, I had to cover this in the book, happen happen. Further south in southern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri. Most of the derachos that happen happen further south. But again, this was an example of an extreme weather event, which we’re seeing more and more of as climate change continues.

Chris Knopf: Carrie. Thank you so much for that. We’ve talked a bit about the the impact on humans there and that no 1 was killed, but we talked about the injuries here now.

In your book, you took a, you have a couple anecdotes about, about wildlife. And so maybe I’ll, I’ll present the question in, in, in two ways. So, so what were some of the behavioral impacts on wildlife in this storm before the storm hit? And what was, what’s the impact on wildlife after the storm?

Cary Griffith: Yeah, you know that’s one of the things I talk a little bit about that in the book.

Of course it’s a human conceit that we’re most concerned about. And the humans when, as Dave was showing one of the reasons we go into the wilderness is to see moose to see the wildlife and the wildlife really suffered in this storm. I tell the story of Pete Weckman going up that moose Lake chain.

He’s coming back after dark, and he’s coming through a little narrows, and he looks up and he’s completely lost because he is really familiar with that whole area. But In the past before the storm, he would look up and he’d see a huge white pine with a giant eagles nest in it, and he could always use that for a landmark on the horizon.

Coming back, the tree was gone. The nest was gone. And, you know, that’s a nesting site. Who knows if there were eaglets in there or even if there weren’t that the eagles come back and use that year in and year out. There were some lots of interesting animal anecdotes in, in this book that there were horses over in Tofte that marched in a parade on July 4th, and this was before several hours before a major storm blew through Tofte on the evening of for fourth July, there were kind of two storms that blew through the one that happened in the noon, and then another one followed.

That dropped 17 inches of rain on tafty 2 horses refused to get into a trailer. They knew something around noon and tafty was coming. They knew stuff was going to happen. The only other thing I’d say is that. I’m sure they’re one of the other things Pete Weckman talked about was seeing in the heart of the storm when the winds must have been blowing about 100 miles per hour waterfowl trying to get up into the and just being battered and, you know, twisted around.

And so I’m sure that happened quite a bit. And I think the woods were really quiet. One other thing is that one of Nicole Selmers people told me that afterwards that evening, you know, one of the most haunting sounds are the loons. And the loons afterwards. I don’t know if Dave, you remember this or you experienced it at all.

You know, they did, they did not sound right. And when they called, they had different calls than you would normally hear on a from loons, you know, at night up in the boundary waters. And I always thought, I’m sure, I don’t know, I’ve, none of my research did I turn up statistics on the impact on the wildlife, but you got to believe it, it was pretty significant.

David Meier: Well, I definitely remember the moose and just the number of moves that we saw was by far more than we’d ever seen. So I think it’s partially the area. And I’d like to go back there, but also you know, I feel like they might have known that something was up. But Carrie, I was really interested in all the human stories in, in your book.

And to me, it appeared just like a tapestry of. Different different stories happening across this map of the boundary waters and and I loved how the different stories weave together. And I’m just wondering about your process as an author, you know, you talk to me for the book and how do you find people for the book?

And then as you’re. Interviewing people, how did you find the connections and how do you know when you had a really interesting piece, either the connected to another piece, or that was worth mentioning, even if it was just a small detail.

Cary Griffith: Yeah, well, I really wanted to tell sort of a narrative.

You know, I could have told a lot of, I could have told a lot more stories. I could have told your story or I could have told, but , it’s easier to pay attention when you’re only dealing with a few people and a few of their stories over the trajectory of what happened in the blow down as it is, I told quite a few stories as, as you alluded to Dave and, and I didn’t want to make it.

Okay. Any more complicated than. It already was mentioning everyone finding people, you know, I started with those folks from the blowdown or from the, the fire and the boundary waters book. Lots of those people worked also worked the forest service people in the DNR people worked on the blowdown. And they knew people, and there was another, there was a, a book that came out a self published book that Jim cordis, who worked for the forest service, I think.

put out two years later called our wounded wilderness. Great book. It was really a compendium of, you know, anecdotes from the, you know, the newspapers up there and all that kind of thing. It, it. It was but it was really useful in identifying people that then I went out and tried to find.

Of course, some of them weren’t that easy to find. Lisa Noss had gotten married. I, I had to find her through the Schoeningers, I think, or through the friends that she went with. But that was, that was how I found them. Yeah, then. Then I, once I found him, I call up and see if they’re interested in telling their story.

By the way, not everyone was some people weren’t because I think it was such a traumatic event. They just didn’t want to get into the details of it, but some people were

Chris Knopf: In the wake of this storm, this was at a time when not many people had cell phones and and so is a bit of a, a communication gap and you get into that.

Carry in the book there. So, what do you all carry in the body? Why does you carry a sat phone or some other way of of connecting in the case of an emergency

David Meier: day? What do you, what do you, what do you do? I mostly just, I’d say, rely on the people that I’m with and and so I haven’t ever carried communication up there.

But I’m going to maybe go on a solo trip this year, and I might consider it for that, just because, you know, if you get in trouble, that little bit of emergency help could be the difference in, in, between life and death.

And I know when we got out of the boundary waters, you know, I went to a pay phone to communicate with. I work because all that rainfall that happened that that 2nd wave of the storm they closed highway 61 for a while. So we were kind of stuck in Graham array. And as I said, we’re on a vacation day.

So I had to call work and be like, sorry, I’m not coming. So we had to get a room there, but I remember going to the outdoor pay phone and dialing up and and being able to get get through. And luckily they were relieved and said, yeah, go ahead and say, what about you, Carrie? Do you do you carry something like that?

I don’t, I, you know,

Cary Griffith: I usually don’t go very far into the boundary waters. I, I, you know, I come back to a bed at night and then paddle into the boundary waters along the edges. But if I was going to do an extensive trip, I think I’d take both a sat phone and then they have these personal locators.

They’re little devices and then you can, you can press a button and if things get, you know, hairy and or if you get injured or something, and they’ll use them to come find you

Chris Knopf: Yes, the spot devices.

Yeah, I think you can

David Meier: usually hook those things up through an outfitter would have access.

Cary Griffith: You used to pay phone if this would have happened today.

 

Cary Griffith: Everybody would have immediately known about it.

We would have had tons of video. We would have an incredible pictures as it was. It was 2, 3 days before anybody knew anything like this happened in the boundary waters. It’s really a testament to how far we’ve come with communications like cell phones and iPhones.

Chris Knopf: Carrie, why don’t you briefly talk about the recovery if you would a year later, 3 years later about how the, how the portages were cleared or whatever, kind of go into that, that sort of.

After after the blowdown

Cary Griffith: yeah, sure. You know, one of the interesting things that some of the Rangers said to me was we had no idea that when this storm happened, I would be working on this for the rest of my career. And some of these guys were talking about 5, 7, 10 years out. They were looking at retirement.

And they had, they had to go in and, you know, recovery, they were going initially, they went in to just cut trails through the portages to, to make sure there wasn’t anybody dead in there or to see if there was anybody injured that still needed assistance. But in the aftermath, in the weeks and months, and at least for the 1st, 2 years, they were going into rehab campsites to to rehab portages to do all kinds of stuff.

And it just took took a long time. I remember, oh, his, his nickname was Blade. He worked for the Forest Service. Really, Tom Caffeine. He’s passed away, but he told me when I was doing, initially doing research, how he worked with volunteers. A lot of, not volunteers, but a lot of Forest Service. Workers from all over the nation came in and he managed a group of forest service people from like California to help clear up the border route trail that goes to the boundary waters.

You know, there are a lot of those trails that had to be cleaned up. And, you know, refer, and, you know, they couldn’t do it. They had to use hand tools, right? With the exception of in the immediate aftermath, Jim Sanders, the forest supervisor said, okay, let’s use chainsaws until we make sure everybody’s okay.

Then they went back to hand tools.

Chris Knopf: Yes, that was really interesting, , it was a, a big deal decision to allow chainsaws to do that. Carrie and, and Dave and I want to. Thank both of you and thank all of our listeners here. I want to thank everyone that was again at Boundary Waters Day at the Capitol . Carry again. I love your writing. I love the stories there. And then it’s a real inspiration.

And Dave, thank you so much for sharing your real world experiences there on July 4th, 1999.

 

David Meier: And carry a huge thank you for joining us and sharing all these stories and for your valuable insights on the blowdown.

Cary Griffith: Thanks a

lot.

David Meier: Make sure. And grab a copy of Gunflint falling for a very interesting read and visit Carrie griffith.com or check out our show notes for more information on Carrie’s other books and where to find them.

 

Dave Meier: And thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend and leave us a rating wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be covering a wide range of recreational topics this season, from hiking trails to tips and tricks, and we’ll meet some great personalities from the B W C A along the way.

So be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. Big Red Canoe is a presentation of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Original Music by Surge and the swell. I’m Dave Meier and we’ll see you next time on Big Red Canoe. Thanks to the dedication of people from across the nation, we’ve made incredible victories in the fight against copper sulfide mining. For now, we’ve stopped this polluting industry from putting a shovel in the ground, but the threat is still there. That’s why we’ve been working to pass a prove it First bill.

In Minnesota, the law is simple. Before a copper sulfide mine in Minnesota can be permitted, the prove it first law would require independent scientific proof. That just one copper sulfide mine has operated in the United States for at least 10 years without causing pollution, and that one mine has been closed for at least 10 years without polluting.

It is common sense. Let’s protect our clean water. Let’s pass the prove it first. Bill.