intel || heritage
Enchanted Forest Mary Griggs Burke led a fairy-tale life at her family’s historic northwoods estate. | BY DAVID MAHONEY
W
hen Mary Griggs Burke died near the end of 2012, the bequest of her vast collection of Japanese art to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art sparked considerable excitement. Less well-publicized was her gift of Forest Lodge, an 872-acre estate on the shores of Lake Namakagon in northern Wisconsin, to the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Although Burke actually arranged the transfer several years earlier, she had retained a life estate to her family’s compound at the heart of the property. This summer, after painstaking restoration, the historic lakeshore retreat finds new life as an environmental and cultural center, with Northland College offering programs for high schoolers and adults. It will also serve as a research station and conference facility for the institution’s new Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation,
256 Artful Living
| Magazine of the North
PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY NORTHLAND COLLEGE AND WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
At last, through the thick foliage, I caught sight of two sturdy stone gate posts, and, with a cry of delight, I realized we were there. Beyond the gate posts ran a very narrow road, almost a path. The branches of the trees brushed the roof of the car. Only spots of sunlight penetrated through the trees; all was dim, and the air smelt of the damp woodland, smelt of rotting wood and cool swampy places covered with moss and inhabited by frogs and polliwogs. This thick growth lasted for only a few turns, and then suddenly a meadow burst into sight, and, beyond the meadow, clear blue sparkling water — the lake.