By Therese Zemlin, MNWWN member
In 2018, my husband and I took ownership of my family’s cabin and property on Indian Lake in Brimson, MN. Spruce budworm was heading our way, and we didn’t think too much about it. It had happened before, and the woods had survived. But this was worse, and by 2020, it was bad. Large swaths of our meandering, lakefront forty acres had turned the copper-oxide green of lichen and the ominous gray of dead spruce and balsam. Then on August 15, 2021, the Greenwood fire broke out approximately 30 miles north of Brimson, burning close to 27,000 acres. We knew this fire absolutely could have been us, and that our luck just might be running out.