As wildfires raged nearby, staff at Camp Widjiwagan, located in northern Minnesota, were presented with an unusual dilemma concerning their staple of canoes.
The team had decisions to make, says Executive Director Ben Hoffman.
"We said that if our evacuation status was to be changed for us to depart, what do we need to have ready that we want to keep? And these 19 boats were on a far-off repair list," Hoffman explains. "And so, we decided that for these particular boats they weren't going to be prioritized to get off property. They would be sunk in the bottom of Burntside Lake."
The canoes safely resurfaced this week.
"Repairs are already underway, and in a surprising turn, the time underwater actually helped prepare some of the canoes for restoration work ahead," Hoffman adds.
Campers have also been on site since Monday, a return to summer normality in a summer that has been farm from usual thanks to massive wildfires in the area.
Hoffman says turning to what is a traditional way for Native peoples to save their canoes was a special way to connect to the wilderness.
"Part of folklore is that, very similar to Indigenous communities with their birch bark canoes, that if we were ever to get to a place where we had to leave boats, then we would ideally sink them in whatever body of water we were in," he explains. "So this was, you know, a momentous moment for us."
More BWCA openings Thursday
More than 1,500 of the 2,000 campsites in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness reopened on Thursday, more than a month after wildfires began to consume tens of thousands of acres of northeastern Minnesota.
It's good news for outfitters and the northland, whose businesses have suffered with the prolonged closure of portions of the BWCA in peak season.
In all, 74,000 acres have been scorched since that initial lightning storm in July... 65,000 in the U.S., and the rest in Canada.
The next chance for widespread rain comes Saturday.
One firefighter had a medical emergency near Ely Tuesday morning and died at the hospital. The U.S. Forest Service says more information is forthcoming.
Now that fires have died down, the canoes at Camp Widgiwagan safely resurfaced this week
Now that fires have died down, the canoes at Camp Widgiwagan safely resurfaced this week
