Nature photographer James Brandenburg describes his reaction to viewing the aftermath of massive windstorm in the BCWA. Brandenburg lives near Ely on the edge of the Boundary Waters.
The Boundary Waters–Canadian Derecho (also called the Boundary Waters Blowdown), produced straight-line winds of up to 100 mph, which uprooted and toppled nearly 500,000 acres of the BWCA's trees in a massive blowdown. It began in Fargo mid-morning on July 4, 1999, and plowed at a northeasterly angle across the state. It mowed across northeastern Minnesota, crossed into Canada, and fizzled out in Maine the following morning, traveling 1,300 miles and lasting 22 hours.
JIM BRANDENBERG: It's a loss. It's a great loss. It does feel like we've lost some kind of a family member. There's a kind of a mourning, knowing it's a natural process. It helps it a little bit. All deaths and births, of course, is natural. But this one is a gargantuan and very humbling scale that I have never seen in my own personal life. I've traveled the world for the Geographic, and photographed and documented some great natural events and catastrophes, and always found that I could deal with it, and shoot it, and come back with the information.
In this case, having flown over the Boundary Waters yesterday, it was difficult for me to shoot. It was for two reasons. Emotionally, it was a little bit startling. Looking through the viewfinder of a camera, it limits your sense of place. I wanted to see it without any obstruction. So I just simply was awestruck at the sheer size and the breadth of this destruction.
In the other hand, it was so big that it was almost frustrating. I couldn't capture it on film. I knew that the camera would not pick up the field. I've seen the Twin Cities newspapers and their coverage. And they had some of the finest photographers working in the Midwest up here. And it didn't even come close to capturing it. And my photographs didn't even come close to it. So those of you that have seen it on television and the news media, you just cannot comprehend the scope.