On October 25, UTS (The Project for Under-Told Stories, St. John’s University) will host a screening of a short documentary – If a Road Runs Through It.  The documentary tells the story of the challenges rapid change and development have brought to the Avon Hills region of Stearns County.

If a Road Runs Through It  is in part an elegy for the passing of a way of rural life nurtured for over a century by family farms, the Saint John’s Abbey, and the Monastery of Saint Benedict.  It tells the story of Bob Rassier’s determination to hang on to his family farm, the last standing farm in the city of St. Joseph. His farm, like the meadow and forest lands of the Monastery of Saint
Benedict stands in the way of a proposed by pass that would connect Interstate 94 with the suburbs and new development sprawling westward from St. Cloud.  If a Road Runs Through It  also tells the story of the stewardship of the land for a century and a half by Saint John’s Abbey.  The Saint John’s Arboretum may well be the last refuge of the old landscape and ecosystem.

The documentary also has an eye for the grounds for hope in the future.  There
is the story of the Schellinger family who have worked for four generations as
carpenters and woodworkers in the area. Other family farms and properties in the area yielded to what seemed to be the
inevitability of a sale to developers and the expansion of housing sub-divisions. 

The Schellinger’s instead sold 102 acres of pristine woodlands along Schuman Lake Road to the DNR where the next generation of the family and their neighbors will continue to have access and enjoy the land as it has been for over the centuries.