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