A Summer of Fire, Courage and Care

By Shane Hoefer and Natalie King

When wildfire threatened, people came together to protect campers, staff and the places that matter most

As featured in Letters from Camp Magazine – Fall 2026.

A photo taken by Nor’wester campers as they evacuated from Wabakimi Provincial Park

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On the afternoon of July 17, a crew of counselors at YMCA Camp Widjiwagan carried 19 canoes down to the water and sank them.

They did it carefully. Staff have been taught for decades how to handle those boats with care, and now every movement mattered. Each canoe was turned on its side and allowed to fill. Two boulders went into the bow. Two more into the stern. Then the 19 were tied together and lashed to shore, so the lake could hold them.

Every one of those hulls was stretched over a frame hand-sawed by Joe Seliga. A few predate the Second World War. Generations of campers have learned to paddle them. At Widjiwagan, the first rule any camper learns is that a wood-canvas hull must never touch rock or sand, only air or water, and, as they teach it, bread dough.

And now, strangely, they were underwater.

That was where they were safest.

They would stay there for a week.

When the Fires Began

The Lightning Event

On July 6, lightning came down across the Superior National Forest, bringing a great deal of thunder and almost no rain — the worst combination this country offers. The vegetation should have been green. Instead, it had been drying since spring.

For a week, the fire sat in the trees and held its heat. Campers paddled past it, and nobody knew what was waiting in the forest around them.

Then Monday, July 13, came in hot, dry, and windy. By afternoon, a thermometer at Seagull Lake read 101 degrees. Seagull sits at the top of the Gunflint Trail, in YMCA Camp Menogyn’s backyard. It had never read 101 before.

And then, all at once, the fire found its moment.

Sixteen fires stood up at once.

By midday, the Forest Service had decided the entire Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness would close at 12:01 the next morning. It was only the third full closure in the wilderness area’s history.

At Widjiwagan, a line is painted across the top of the old Big Board trips planner. Former program director Amy Hadow calls it the unofficial camp motto:

“Subject to sudden and catastrophic change.”

For generations, it had been a bit of camp wisdom, a knowing nod to the unpredictability of wilderness trips. Now, for the first time, it felt less like a quippy motto than a dire warning.

The Closure

Three YMCA of the North camps were directly in the path of what was unfolding: Widjiwagan and YMCA Camp du Nord, neighbors on the North Arm of Burntside Lake outside Ely, and Menogyn, 100 road miles east on West Bearskin Lake, reachable only by boat.

Over the next five days, all three would be forced to reckon with the rapidly changing conditions. Two evacuated. Menogyn pulled several trips off the water and ended two more summer sessions early.

And the impact did not stop there.

Three other YMCA Camps — Warren, Northern Lights and Icaghowan (in Amery, Wisc.) — made the difficult decision to close or send campers home early as smoke blanketed the region.

The stories from those days will become legend, the kind of camp lore retold over decades, affecting an entire generation of campers. For the six affected camps, 1,103 campers and 682 families saw their summers suddenly rewritten.

For a few, dramatically so.

At the peak of the crisis, 11 campers and four guides waited roughly 48 hours in Wabakimi Provincial Park, 175 miles inland in Ontario, for Canadian aircraft to lift them out.

Every one of them came home.

But this is not really a story about fire.

It is a story about what people did when the unexpected arrived.

“The story I hope people remember isn’t simply that there were wildfires. I hope they remember the people. The wilderness leaders who cared for kids, the families who trusted us, the emergency partners who answered our calls, and the camp teams who kept showing up for one another. That’s the story of this summer for me.”
-Michel Tigan, Senior Vice President of Adventure and Wellbeing

Getting Them Out

Move the People

Menogyn runs about 120 wilderness trips in a season. On July 13, 16 of them were out, spread across three regions.

Fourteen came out quickly, without immediate danger to anyone.

Two did not.

Getting a group off the water is not a one-phone-call job. It is a network of preparation, communication, and decisions that may have to work across hundreds of miles of wilderness.

Every Menogyn and Widjiwagan trip carries a satellite phone, kept off unless the group needs it. Trips running a month or longer carry a GPS-satellite device as well.

That equipment became especially important for the two of the Nor’wester groups traveling through Wabakimi Provincial Park. As conditions deteriorated, they waited about two days for the weather to clear. Rescue crews knew where they were the entire time.

Both groups waited overnight for their air evacuation. One group came out by helicopter and one by float plane.

Eleven campers, ages 16 to 18, and four guides.

The decision to move them came before anyone had the luxury of certainty.

Thunder Bay

Menogyn trail guide Leanne Riegel arrived at camp in May expecting to spend the summer guiding young people through the wilderness.

She did not expect to be handed the keys to a van and sent to meet groups whose trips had been cut short due to natural disasters.

But when the call came, she knew what to do.

“I was glad to be chosen to go,” she said. “Being able to stay calm and be there for people is something I am comfortable with.”

She started by thinking about the little things.

Watercolors. Stamps, ink pads and paper. Both guides played guitar, so she took one from the dining hall. At the grocery store, she filled the cart with fresh fruit and vegetables and whatever else looked like comfort.

“I was thinking about things that would be soothing and comforting,” she said.

The campers had come out fast. Some had left without their shoes. So Leanne made another stop and bought flip-flops for everyone.

Then she set up a table.

They could make thank-you cards for the rescuers or simply make art. Some painted the fire. Some did not want to talk about it, and nobody made them. There was no expectation that they had to make sense of what had happened. They could simply be together and begin, in their own way, to process it.

The guitar moved from one guide to the other. They made lunch. They brought out ice cream. They played games. The campers whittled, using the same skills their guides had taught them on trail. They drove around in the vans with the music on and stopped for boba tea.

Little by little, the day began to feel less like an evacuation and more like camp.

At dinner, they sang, told stories, and made it as much like a farewell banquet as they could.

The message from Menogyn leadership had been simple: Go support the kids. Use whatever means you think are best.

For Riegel, that meant understanding that getting the campers physically out of the wilderness was only the beginning.

“You can’t change what happened,” she said. “But you can impact how they process it.”

And that was the work: not erasing what had happened, but helping the campers find their way through it.

“This could have been a debacle,” she said. “For as dramatic as it seemed from the outside, it was run with grace, intelligence and logic.”

Nor’wester Evacuations

A few groups were particularly impacted by wildfires as they travelled through Wabakimi Provincial Park on their 32-day Nor’wester canoeing routes.

They were 175 miles north of the Minnesota border, inside a provincial park with no road out and fire on the move.

They waited about 48 hours for the weather to clear. The whole time, a satellite phone kept telling the people who needed to know exactly where they were.

On the morning they came out, Michel told TV reporters the group was “in good spirits, probably a little hungry and ready for a shower, but medically they are doing well.”

Every one of them came home.

*Nor’wester is Menogyn’s 32 day, invitation-only program for teens in 11th-12th grade.

Back Where They Belong

Widjiwagan’s Seglia canoes, sunken for their protection

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Beneath the Surface

Most of Widjiwagan’s fleet had somewhere to go.

More than 100 canoes went to Ely or out onto the athletic field, where there were no trees and a sprinkler could reach them.

Nineteen stayed.

They were the ones already waiting on more extensive repair, but they were also the oldest and least replaceable things camp owns.

Sinking them was not an improvisation. Tom Grant, the camp’s canoe master, said the idea of sinking canoes to protect them from wildfire had been part of camp lore for decades.q

In the Northwoods, when you cannot move a wood-and-canvas boat out of a fire’s way, you put it under.

Still, it is worth pausing on how strange that must have felt.

At Widjiwagan, every canoe is numbered and tracked all season. Its condition and history are written down. Campers are taught to handle these boats with more care than almost anything else they will touch that summer.

And now, staff were filling 19 of them with rocks and pushing them under.

Priceless History

Widjiwagan could paddle Kevlar. Most camps do. It is lighter, tougher, and never needs to be re-canvassed.

But if convenience were the point, Widjiwagan would have made a different choice long ago.

Instead, the camp has continued to care for and paddle wood-canvas canoes — boats that ask something of their users. They must be lifted carefully, carried thoughtfully, and handled with an awareness that they are not indestructible. They require patience. They require stewardship. And, over time, they become part of the memory of the people who paddle them.

“Widjiwagan does not use wood canvas canoes for convenience or practical reasons,” said Joe Smith, who spent decades as the camp’s property manager. “Widjiwagan uses wood-canvas canoes because they are handcrafted and thus require care, thoughtfulness, and stewardship — the very values we hope to instill in young people. We also do not display wood-canvas canoes at Widjiwagan. We use them to travel through the wilderness.”

That distinction matters.

These are not artifacts behind glass or relics preserved for someone else to admire. They are working canoes. Campers have sat in them, learned to paddle in them, carried them over portages, and trusted them to carry them into the wilderness. Their scratches and repairs are part of their history, written into the hulls by generations of use.

That is what makes them part of the Widji Way.

And perhaps that is why, in a summer when so much was suddenly uncertain, the decision to save them felt like more than protecting a fleet of canoes. It was protecting a piece of what Widjiwagan has always asked young people to learn: that the things worth carrying forward are the things we are willing to care for.

Out of the Depths

On July 24, the canoes came back up out of Burntside.

By then, the camps were beginning to find their way back, too. Not all at once, and not without work still ahead, but little by little, over the course of about two weeks, summer began to return.

Icaghowan was back to normal on July 19. Northern Lights followed on July 22. Warren welcomed campers back on July 26, and Menogyn on July 27.

Then, on August 2, campers returned to Camp du Nord and Widjiwagan.

At Widjiwagan, the return began beneath the surface.

The rocks stayed in the lake.

The boats did not.

Ben Hoffman, Widjiwagan’s executive director, called bringing them back to the surface the most peaceful part of an otherwise frightening month.

“It was a calming process to bring the boats back to the surface,” he said, “leaving the rocks within the lake, watching the boats rise, swamped and ready to be delivered to the drying surface and wait their turn to be reviewed.”

One by one, the canoes were dried, inspected, and repaired where needed. Then they went back into the sheds, ready to go back out on — not under — the water, just where they were supposed to be.

The canoes were home.

And in their return was a reminder that coming through a summer like this is not the same as simply putting it behind you.

“We’re not interested in simply getting through this summer and moving on,”

Michel said. “We need to ask what this experience taught us. The environment we operate in is changing, and our responsibility is to keep learning alongside it.”

For now, the canoes are back in the sheds, ready for winter.

The tripping center looks much as it always has: paddles, maps, sashes and hats hanging in their familiar places.

“The symbols of our paddles, our canoes, our maps, our sashes and hats that hang in our tripping center,” Ben said, “those are all reflective of the amazing things that have happened, and also the amazing things that will continue to.”

The Fire's Reach

Protect the Place

Once the people were out, the work changed.

At Camp du Nord, the full-time team stayed behind and started making a list.

Not just any list.

The things that could not be replaced.

The old camp sign that once stood at the front entrance. A plaque from Wally’s Woodshed. Handmade du Nord triangles. Anyone who has spent a week there could imagine what else might have made the cut.

“If we get a ‘go’ order, everyone leaves, and possibly we don’t return for a few weeks,” said Andy Sinykin, executive director at du Nord.

So they went building to building, gathering what mattered most.

At the same time, volunteers came out from town and spent days pulling brush and anything else that could burn away from the buildings. The same work was underway at Widjiwagan. Sashes and Hats representing decades of Arctic Trips and Paddles and Mountains marked with with the names of thousands of alumni were moved to safer ground.

More than 100 canoes were staged in Ely or out on the athletic field, away from the trees where a sprinkler could reach them.

A precious few went into the lake.

Much of that preparation had begun years before anyone knew they would need it.

Widjiwagan, du Nord and Menogyn all have fire suppression systems — sprinklers, sprayers and pumps set around camp, drawing lake water through a long hose. At Widjiwagan, Property Manager Jake Cahill says the system comes up in under 10 minutes. During drought, they run it weekly, simply to raise the humidity around the buildings.

All three camps had also been removing balsam for years. Pest damage had left much of it, as one volunteer put it, “basically just matchsticks waiting to be lit.”

The work was part of a longer lesson the camps already understood: The wilderness changes, and the way a camp cares for its people and its places has to change with it.

“Menogyn has experienced challenges like this before, and we expect to face them again,” said Forrest Ahrens, executive director at Camp Menogyn. “Natural disasters are not going away. We continue to evolve and strengthen our programs and training as the world changes around us."

When the Smoke Came

For Camps Warren, Northern Lights and Icaghowan, the threat took a different form.

The flames never came near them.

The smoke did.

None of the three camps was under direct threat at any point, but the air itself had become dangerous enough that all three ultimately sent their campers home early.

Between July 14 and 17, Minnesota experienced the worst and most widespread smoke outbreak in its recorded history. A sensor in West Duluth read 617.8 µg/m³, likely a state record. Air quality alerts reached Maroon, the top of the official index and a category most of the state had never seen.

At Icaghowan, a sensor ran off the end of the scale entirely, unofficially reading greater than 900 µg/m³.

For the camps, knowing when to act was not something they had to figure out in the moment. YMCA Camping developed a standard operating procedure for compromised air quality in 2023, giving program leaders a framework for decision-making when conditions can change by the hour. They checked the numbers several times a day, compared readings across locations and, when it was time to make
a call, each camp director communicated directly with families.

July 15-16, Northern Lights, Warren, and Icaghowan all made the same decision.

The campers were coming home.

Not because the fire had reached their camps, but because the people entrusted with their care knew when it was time to put safety first.

What Comes Next

Lessons That Shape the Future

Six camps had their summers rewritten.

They came through because people had prepared for years — and because neighbors showed up when it mattered.

Now comes the work of rebuilding and preparing for the summers ahead.

At Menogyn, groups came off the water carrying what they could. Seventeen canoes, including four wood-canvas boats, along with tents, cooking gear, packs, and paddles, were left behind. Crews will return to recover what they can.

Some of the gear will come home, some will not.

The work ahead is practical, but deeply connected to the mission that brings campers here. As we prepare for another season, we’re strengthening the places, people, and systems that make Adventure possible, and learning from what this summer taught us.

Firewise and Defensible Space
Clearing brush and removing vulnerable trees at Widjiwagan, du Nord and Menogyn, with the Minnesota DNR and the U.S. Forest Service.

Communications Equipment
Adding satellite phones and two-way GPS devices on more trips, more of the time. This is what kept the Wabakimi groups findable.

Staff Training
More scenarios, more often, and continued work at the Wilderness Risk Management Conference.

Fleet and Gear
Replacing the canoes, tents, packs, and paddles left on trail, and recovering what can still be brought home.

Camper Support
Helping families whose camp sessions were canceled or interrupted come back — and making sure the financial impact of this summer does not become a barrier to future camp experiences.

The Work of Carrying It Forward

There will be more summers.

More young people will arrive carrying backpacks and questions, learning to paddle, portage, sleep beneath the stars and discover what they are capable of.

And there will be more days when the wilderness asks something of us, too.

Our camps are changing with it — meeting the future with the same care, preparation and courage that have carried Adventure through generations.

That work begins now.

Get Involved

The Northern Wildfires YMCA Camp Relief Efforts are helping our camps recover from the extraordinary costs of this summer — from canceled programming and refunds to emergency transportation, staffing and equipment losses.

If you believe in what these places make possible for young people, this is a moment to help care for them. Because these places have given us so much.

They have given young people room to grow, families stories to carry home, and generations of campers a deeper understanding of themselves, one another and the wild places that make it all possible.

We are not simply preserving what was here before us. We are caring for something entrusted to us — so it can continue to shape lives long after we are gone.

Help our camps respond, recover and prepare for the seasons ahead.

Learn More launch

Camp Alumni Camp Menogyn Camp du Nord Camp Widjiwagan Camp Northern Lights Camp Warren Camp Icaghowan