Book Review: Gunflint Falling by Cary J. Griffith
A dramatic retelling of the historic 1999 blowdown in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota.
I didn't start visiting the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) until I met my husband (then-boyfriend). My first trip into the BWCA was in 2015, several years after the events depicted in this book.
If you're from Minnesota, you've at least heard of the BWCA. The BWCA is a pristine, remote wilderness that borders northern Minnesota and Canada, with 1,000+ lakes and 1 million+ acres of forest. According to Wikipedia, it's the most visited wilderness in the USA. People pay good money to carry everything they need in their canoe, and carry said canoe and packs for several miles), to camp in this incredible wilderness where your remote campsite has a firepit + grate, a tent pad, and a latrine nearby.
When I visited, I didn't know a lot about the ecology of the area. I knew it was boreal forest, some of the oldest in the world. I knew that cell phone signal was spotty (in fact, non-existent in most places). I knew that my chances of running into a bear or moose were pretty high. But I wasn't familiar with the history of this place.
This was a fascinating story and a terrifying storm. In July 1999, it produced winds up to 120 mph, flattening 300 million trees, stranding thousands of people in remote wilderness where there is no cell service - on a holiday weekend, no less. About 60 injured evacuated via plane or helicopter. And incredibly, no fatalities.
Some of the details were a bit over my head, but I enjoyed the broad strokes. The stories depicted were woven together really well, and I liked how the book was structured.
The incident reports included in the end was an interesting touch. I also really appreciated the chapter at the end about how some meteorological events (extreme storms like derechos) create tinder that can spark wildfires (see: Ham Lake Fire of 2007, described in this author's earlier book Gunflint Burning).
"Sometimes the longest journeys happen because there is no other alternative than to keep going."
I have a deep appreciation for this area of the world and I loved that the author took a deep dive into the repercussions of this storm. This book might not be for everyone, but I appreciated it because I'm very familiar with the area. And still, some of the details were skimmed a bit. I still enjoyed reading about one of my favorite places in the world.
Rating: ★★★★
Book Summary
- Title: Gunflint Falling
- Author: Cary J. Griffith
- Genre: Non-Fiction, History, Outdoors
- Who Should Read It? This would be an interesting read for anyone with familiarity with this region of the country.
Synopsis: On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region’s history. Originating over the Dakotas, the midsummer windstorm developed amid unusually high heat and water-saturated forests and moved steadily east, bearing down on Fargo, North Dakota, and damaging land as it crossed the Minnesota border. Gunflint Falling tells the story of this devastating storm from the perspectives of those who were on the ground before, during, and after the catastrophic event—from first-time visitors to the north woods to returning paddlers to Forest Service Rangers.
The pre-dawn forecasts from the National Weather Service in Duluth for that Sunday of the holiday weekend predicted the day would be “warm and humid. Partly sunny with a thirty percent chance of thunderstorms.” But as the afternoon and evening settled over the Boundary Waters, the first eyewitness accounts began to tell a dramatic and terrifying story. Five friends camping on Lake Polly watched in wonder as the sky turned green and the winds began to whip. They scrambled to pull canoes on shore and secure tarps when a tree snapped and struck one of them in the head, rendering her unconscious. Three women enjoying their last day of a camping trip near the end of the Gunflint Trail took shelter in their tent as winds increased. Water drenched the nylon walls as trees crashed around them, one flattening the tent and pinning a woman beneath its weight. A family vacationing at their cabin dodged falling trees and strained against straight-line winds as they sprinted from the cabin to the safest place they knew: a crawl space underneath it. They watched in awe as trees snapped and toppled, their twisted root balls torn out of the water-logged earth—as they prayed their cabin would hold.
By the time the storm began to subside, falling trees had injured approximately sixty people, and most needed to be medevacked to safety. Amazingly, no one died. The historic storm laid down timber that would later blaze in the Ham Lake fire of 2007, ultimately reshaping the region’s forests in ways we have yet to fully understand.
