Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t get you then the left one will
—from “Sixteen Tons” as sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford

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That’s the challenge the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness faces today along the Minnesota-Ontario border. The pristine area, the largest U.S. designated wilderness region east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Everglades, with two million acres of forest and lakes, is threatened on two fronts, one of them unavoidable and the other entirely manmade.

The unavoidable danger is the forest fires that are currently ravaging western Ontario and northern Minnesota, including wilderness within the Boundary Waters. More than 73,000 acres in the area have burned so far, and as of this past weekend, some of the blazes are still uncontrolled. Other fires continue to devastate many more forest acres in Ontario to the north and west of the Boundary Waters.

Lightning has sparked most of the fires, as hot, dry weather continues across the area. It’s nobody’s fault. We can’t yet control lightning.

But President Donald Trump doesn’t see it that way. He blames the nation of Canada for the thick, choking smoke that blanketed much of America’s Midwest and East.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.

Growing up in the 1950s, Evans family vacations seem typical by rural Midwest standards: car trips to the Ozarks, the Black Hills, Nauvoo and New Salem in Illinois, or St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game.

But one memorable summer trip, around 1960, occurred when we motored north through Minnesota to Canada, the only foreign country my parents ever visited and a place more exotic than the Wisconsin Dells. 

Exotic? Absolutely. This trip required us to stop at the border and clear a Canadian customs check.