St. Croix 360 founder Greg Seitz is currently artist-in-residence at Pine Needles, a historic cabin on the St. Croix River provided by the Science Museum of Minnesota. While Greg is using this time to focus on writing a book, he will share occasional updates like the one below.

“1884: September 9. A tornado in the St. Croix Valley hit Marine especially hard. Its ‘pecuniary loss…was far greater than in all other towns combined.’ About half a million feet of high-grade, stacked lumber was blown away, the mill’s towering smokestack was demolished, and the company’s loss was estimated at $15,000. The mill dam and sluice were destroyed, the Nels P. Roth [Root] home was reported (probably erroneously) blown into the river, the Ole Westergren house was wrecked, and the roof of the stone town house was severely damaged. According to the Taylors Falls Journal, ‘nearly every building in Marine was more or less injured.’”

– Dunn, James Taylor. Marine on St. Croix: 150 Years of Village Life. Marine Restoration Society, 1989.

The morning after the storm, I have no power and thus no running water, no internet, no distractions. I have plenty of hard copy research materials to read and plenty of legal pads to write by hand on. It is still a disruption. The uncertainty and feeling of my fate being out of my own control is its own issue.

The big oak at the top of the hill, by the rock with the plaque on it commemorating the Dunn family’s story and their generous donation, came down in the storm. It snapped off about fifteen feet up the trunk and completely covered the driveway. So I’m not going anywhere until Amber and Andrew from the Research Station arrive with chainsaws to liberate me.

I sit in the quiet, slowly warming cabin, look out the windows at the river slipping past, the tree leaves rustling in the breeze. And I see a hummingbird visiting its favorite lilies, and a phoebe hovers briefly outside the window while it tries to grab a bug or something. Song sparrows and cardinals sing. These creatures all rode out the storm without the benefit of a roof like mine, and I wondered about them last night before it hit.

Now, in the light of a sunny day, the storm long gone, they are back to their daily routines like nothing happened, while the human world sits and waits for our conveniences to be returned. I don’t think the birds are worried about me at all.

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Back-to-back storms last Sunday and Monday nights clobbered the St. Croix Valley, especially Marine. After a big one Sunday night, the power came back on at Pine Needles Monday evening. It stayed on about four hours, until the second, bigger storm arrived. Neither the cabin nor my own nearby house were damaged, but the village got hit hard. Numerous trees were down around the elementary school, church, and all over town. The Kiwanis Boy Scout Camp, near my house and where my son was supposed to spend the week, saw severe damage (Star Tribune article). A lot of the down trees were oaks, some snapped off fifteen to twenty feet up, and many pushed over roots and all. Healthy trees with full crowns of leaves that must have caught the wind like sails on a ship.

It’s probably the worst storm damage I’ve ever seen around here. Trees do grow back and houses get fixed, and nobody got hurt, but in the moment, it’s feels like devastation: a place, my home, turned inside out.

So I did not get much writing done for a couple days. At first, the devastation seemed antithetical to the residency, the kind of distraction that cannot be ignored. The rest of my family had their lives upended, while I juggled things at home and Pine Needles. My heart went out to people with damaged houses, beloved trees destroyed, even my church, which had the cross blown off its steeple.

I had spent the first couple days here relaxed and content to move slowly, to settle in. But right when I intended to seriously start putting down some words, the storms came. I became unsettled once again, uprooted like the trees, my thoughts blown around and scattered on the ground like leaves ripped from the branches.

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Storms have been a part of life on Earth ever since the atmosphere formed. The north-south St. Croix River, covering about a degree-and-a-half of latitude, on the an eastern edge to the Great Plains, catches a lot of storms roaring in from the west.

Last week, I was reminded of the other storms that have hit Marine and the whole river, as recorded in written history. The biggest one to hit Marine on St. Croix was a tornado in 1884, as described by James Taylor Dunn above and mentioned my W.H.C. Folsom in the first quote below. Many other people and communities around the watershed have been affected by storms in recent memory, like the Siren tornado of 2001, the blowdown in east-central Minnesota in July 2011, the small tornado that took out more than a thousand trees at nearby Warner Nature Center in July 2017, severe storms in late June of this year in Hayward, and countless others.

The St. Croix valley was the site of what remains the ninth-deadliest storm in United States history, the New Richmond tornado of June 1899. It dealt devastation and death, and was answered with community and connection. Some of the first relief to arrive was a train full of doctors and nurses sent from Stillwater in the middle of the night.

Out and about. (Greg Seitz/St. Croix 360)

There is no separating yourself from your place. I planned to mostly live and work at Pine Needles in solitude, arriving with gigabytes of research and a stack of books, a laptop with my manuscript and a thousand reference documents on it, thinking it was my big chance to stay focused on the book, at least get a few chapters drafted, seeing others only occasionally. Somehow, I had not planned for being affected by the very place I was writing about.

Storms and weather are one of the layers of the map, an intersection between natural forces and human lives, that I will write about in my book. I should not be surprised by my own life being affected by the climate.

There is also the simple fact that our weather is no longer wholly a historic or natural force. It is the creation of humans, controlled through carbon emissions that cause the greenhouse effect. Even though there are many stories of storms from the past centuries in these parts, global warming is causing wilder swings in weather, with more extreme events of all kinds. These storms were not necessarily caused by climate change, but all weather is affected by it. This is a fact of living here today.

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Once the roads were open, structures were secured, power was on, I needed to reboot and reset the residency. I needed to reground, root myself in the place and the work.

While it’s hard to leave the serenity and scenery of Pine Needles, part of my work did involve a couple short “field trips” for book work. I celebrated “International Bog Day” by mapping a bog at a friend’s house, and another day explored the area of an important story I’ve been working on here. I took five separate walks around different public lands to experience the places that affected events long ago.

I also keep exploring and mapping, by foot and canoe, the Pine Needles property and the adjacent river. I mark massive white pines and fragile flowers, crystal clear spring water flowing over pure clean sand, a small sandstone quarry surely more than a century old.

Even when I’m inside, nature comes to me. There seem to be osprey often working the water right in front of the cabin. I see them sometimes, but trees block much of my view. So I listen, and I hear them cry and screech and keen. There have also been bald eagles around, occasionally seen and heard. I believe I am hearing the old battles between these birds, as osprey try to fish and eagles try to steal the fruits of their labor, but it’s mostly up to my ears and imagination to follow the fight.

And I write. In the dawn, with fog gathered over the water, while the morning sun glinted off ruffled water, as the sun climbed overhead and canoes and kayaks came past, while the sun set behind me and the river took on golden hues, and as night settled, with owls and crickets — I put down words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages.

Storm stories

“The Swedish Evangelical Lutherans built the first church in the town of Marine, in section 27, in 1856, a log structure afterward used as a school, its place being supplied by a new structure in section 14 in 1858. In 1874 a large church 50 X 80 feet, ground plan, and with steeple 80 feet high, succeeded the second structure. A fine parsonage was attached. This church was blown down by a cyclone in 1884, but was rebuilt.”

– Folsom, William H. C. Fifty Years in the Northwest. Pioneer Press Company, 1888.

“What was known at the time as the Bass Lake cyclone occurred June 29, 1877, although technically it much nearer resembled a tornado. Nearly all the buildings belonging to the Washington County Agricultural Society were destroyed, together with other structures in that vicinity. The county fair was held at the Lily Lake grounds, September, 1877.”

– Easton, Augustus B. History of the Saint Croix Valley. H.C. Cooper, Jr., & Company, 1909.

“Patrick Whalen purchased 212 acres in section 2, Stillwater township, and built a home. In the cyclone of 1884 this home, together with the farm buildings, was swept away with eighteen stacks of wheat. The whole property was swept clean, nothing being left standing. He at once built the house where he now resides on the site of the old home and rebuilt.”

– Ibid.

“A cyclone swept down upon Stillwater, July 14, 1893, killed two men and destroyed considerable property.”

– Ibid.

“The City of New Richmond was visited by a death-dealing cyclone at 6 o’clock on the evening of June 12 , 1899. About a hundred people were killed; a thousand others more or less injured. A fire broke out in the wreckage, caused by the upsetting or demolishing of stoves, and it was believed that many bodies, dead or wounded, were incinerated. A special train, loaded with physicians and nurses, was sent from Stillwater, reaching the scene of the awful disaster, ‘where blew the wind of death,’ at 3 o’clock next morning.”

– Ibid.

“Great was his triumph when enough land had been cleared to plant, between the huge stumps, six bushels of wheat, three bushels of rye, and some potatoes; but his joy was of short duration, for a cyclone, accompanied by hail, entirely destroyed his first crop. This was the most trying year of Mr. Anderson’s existence; but, undaunted in spirit, he worked and persevered until he recovered from the blow.”

– Strand, Algot E. and Lewis Publishing Company. A History of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota. Lewis Publishing, 1910.