Relief and sorrow amid the ashes

ON THE GUNFLINT TRAIL - It was a bittersweet homecoming Thursday for people at the end of the Gunflint Trail, a place ravaged last week by the Ham Lake wildfire.

Joe and Corrine Sierakowski were among the lucky ones. The retired couple returned to find their spacious log home on Gull Lake as they'd left it May 6.

On Thursday, they were among several dozen property owners who were allowed by authorities to pass a roadblock and visit their places at the end of the trail from noon to 4 p.m.

The property owners weren't allowed to stay; the last 7 miles of the trail are still under an evacuation order.

The sprinklers the Sierakowskis left running had helped preserve an island of green in a sea of scorched earth and forest. The view from the deck through the trees to the sparkling water was serene.

The fire that had claimed 138 structures and spared 759 others had not claimed theirs.

"We were happy to see our house still here," Joe Sierakowski said, "but it was kind of disheartening to see what's happened to our neighbors and friends, and to the beautiful countryside."

Of the 11 homes or cabins on their road, only four remained, he said.

Nearby, on the top of a rock bluff with a breathtaking view of Saganaga Lake, mounds of ash and debris told the story of a couple who were not so lucky when the fire chomped its way north.

Frank and Pat Shunn, good friends of the Sierakowskis, lost the home he had built with his own hands in 1979. To pay for the lumber, he had guided fishermen, done light construction and maintained vacation properties for seasonal residents. She had parked vacationers' cars at the county lot at the end of the trail.

They had done what they had to do, both said, in order to live atop a precipice in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

"I would walk out and stand on my deck with the stars overhead and everything quiet, and I would feel I was in paradise," Frank Shunn said.

All that's left of that deck are rows of evenly spaced nails atop the ashes.

The trunks of the tall pines studding the 7-acre bluff were blacked, their needles burnt orange. The ash-coated debris included metal parts from the Shunns' sprinkler system.

Unlike the Sierakowskis, the Shunns decided not to visit their property Thursday. They told their story by phone from their other home in Cloquet.

They bought that home in 2005 as a place to spend the winters. They know they'll eventually have to see their Gunflint Trail place with their insurance agent, but they aren't looking forward to it.

"So much of what we loved is gone," Frank Shunn said.

Frightening exodus

People near the end of the Gunflint Trail had smelled smoke and seen fine ash in the air for hours that Sunday -- May 6.

Frank Shunn, a volunteer firefighter, had kept his eyes on the horizon, and what he saw toward evening alarmed him.

"I could see flames less than a mile away, and they were coming fast," he said. "I'd been trapped by fire before, and most people don't understand how terrible that is. I said, 'We're going.' "

Nearby, the nearness of the danger was dawning on the Sierakowskis, too. "The hot ashes were falling, and we knew it was just a matter of minutes," Corrine Sierakowski said.

There was no time to pack. "We couldn't fit all our treasures," she said. "What do you take?"

The Shunns took only their important papers and their two cats. Later, Pat Shunn, an avid cook, would grieve for the loss of all the cookbooks and recipes she'd accumulated over 45 years.

Law enforcement officers gathered residents and led a line of cars down the 57-mile, dead-end trail. Three times the convoy tried to get through the area where fire had reached the road, only to be forced to stop and back up because long tongues of flame were coming across the pavement. On the fourth try, they made it through.

The very next day, firefighters began an inventory of properties lost and properties saved, often through their efforts. Word spread of what was left and what was gone. The Sierakowskis thanked God for saving the home Corrine designed and they'd had built 17 years ago with local Norway pine logs.

"We honeymooned at Gunflint Lodge, and it was our dream to retire here," said Corrine Sierakowski.

Before retiring they both worked for 3M and lived in the Twin Cities area. "This place is our dream, and our dream is still here."

In Cloquet, the Shunns learned their dream home was gone.

"It was quite a hard blow," said Frank Shunn, a former Cloquet business owner who had moved to the wilderness when he was stricken with Hodgkin's disease and a doctor told him he had nine months to live. That was in 1967.

"I thought, if I'm going to die, I'm going to do what I want in the meantime," he said. "But then I didn't die."

Although they are insured, the Shunns say they won't rebuild. He's 73 now; she's 66. He said colon cancer has left him weakened and not up to it. And he wonders if, with so many trees scorched and possibly killed, he'd ever get over the loss of the beauty he had known.

Both said they are thankful though -- to have made it out alive, and to have known that beauty for so long.

"We lived life to the fullest in a place we treasured," he said, to which she added: "We were very lucky."

Larry Oakes • 1-218-727-7344 • loakes@startribune.com