As winter approaches, we should share our resources with neighbors who have lost so much this year. In 2026, Utah wildfires burned over 560,000 acres of land, destroyed hundreds of structures and killed two helicopter firefighters. Such grievous losses bring to mind similar catastrophes in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, other states and nations: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires.
Every year in October, I remember the 1871 Peshtigo Fire that burned over 1.2 million acres, destroyed thousands of buildings, consumed 16 entire villages, killed 1,200 to 2,500 people and displaced 1,500-5,000 settlers in northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan. The poet Emily Dickinson responds to news about the firestorm in a mid-October 1871 letter to her cousins “Lou” and “Fanny.” Louisa and Frances Norcross were living in Milwaukee, and they had written to Emily in Amherst, Massachusetts, about emergency supply drives for victims of deadly forest fires in Wisconsin.
Emily’s response begins by conveying relief that her cousins were spared, yet also conveys shock and sadness for those who were harmed: “We have the little note and are in part relieved, but have been too alarmed and grieved to hush immediately.” Emily says that she cannot stop crying about the disaster, even in her dreams: “The heart keeps sobbing in its sleep.”
The poet uses metaphoric language to portray how one seemingly harmless spark can become a fiery tornado that ravages a settlement: “It is the speck that makes the cloud that wrecks the vessel, children, yet no one fears a speck.” She acknowledges the urgent needs of those who survived the conflagration: “I hope that what is not lost is saved.”
In words reminiscent of Martha’s lament at the tomb of Lazarus in the New Testament (John 11:21), Dickinson implies that the event would not have happened if there had been divine intervention: “Were any angel present, I feel it could not be allowed.” She states her gratitude starkly, with a metonymic hint that she would have been an angel intervening to save her cousins: “So grateful that my little girls are not on fire too. Amherst would have quenched them.”
Emily’s attention shifts to relief efforts in Wisconsin and closer to home in Massachusetts: “Thank you for comforting innocent blamed creatures — we are trying, too.” Dickinson’s oxymoron points to the irony that innocent individuals affected by the inferno were sometimes criticized in generalized reports about causes of the fire.
Emily’s cousins, along with people in neighboring states, were focusing on clothing donations: “The mayor of Milwaukee cuts out and you and Lou sew, don’t you? The New York Times said so.” According to local and national newspaper stories, Mayor Joseph Phillips of Milwaukee and officials in other cities organized service projects. Hundreds of citizens worked non-stop, cutting material, stitching clothes, making quilts, gathering winter boots and raising funds.
Dickinson includes emotional support as a complement to material goods and monetary contributions for the survivors: “Sorrow is the ‘funds’ never quite spent, always a little left to be loaned kindly.” To paraphrase, we always have enough sorrow in our own lives to lend consolation to others who are suffering.
In addition to heartfelt sympathy, however, she wishes that she could make a donation in kind: “We have a new cow — I wish I could give Wisconsin a little pail of milk.” The poet’s understated wish is poignant because fire victims experience dehydration and severe thirst.
Her wish is nostalgic because the orphaned Norcross sisters used to watch their older cousin Emily write down poetic thoughts while she skimmed milk in the Dickinson’s pantry. The wish is prophetic because, in the years after the fire, Wisconsin became the dairy capital of the United States, known for the best milk in the country.
Emily’s compassionate response really hits home because my family heritage includes survivors and victims of the Great Fire. Both sides of my father’s family had already endured crossing the Atlantic in the 1850s and losing young men in the Civil War in the 1860s. My father’s paternal grandparents, Barbara Bohman and Godfrey Hallen, were on their way from Waterford to Marinette on Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871, when they “passed thru the Peshtigo Fire, having been in that city the night of that awful calamity.” They survived the fire by immersing themselves in the Peshtigo River with their two-year-old daughter Liesel, who died of a fever 14 months later.
My father’s maternal great-grandparents Sophia Scheelk and Joseph Martin lived in the Lower Sugar Bush area, southwest of Peshtigo, near Sophia’s twice-widowed mother Christina Bartels. Most of the Bartels, Martin and Scheelk family members survived by digging trenches in the fields and covering themselves with earth, as they had been advised to do by Native Americans who lived nearby. Tragically, Sophia’s only sister perished in the fire: Frederica Kiefer died on her 23rd birthday, Oct. 8, 1871, with her husband Peter (a Civil War veteran) and their little daughter Anna. Only their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Christina survived.
I am deeply comforted by Emily Dickinson’s response to the deadliest wildfire in the history of the United States. Her sorrow for the victims and survivors is indeed “loaned kindly.” May we emulate Emily Dickinson in word and deed by lending our kindness to those who need it now more than ever.