If a Road Runs Through It

On February 12, the Avon Hills initiative will host a second screening of a short documentary—If a Road Runs Through It. The film was directed by Mark Conway and Nick Hayes and produced by Nikki See, with Fred de Sam Lazaro as executive producer. The second screening of the film will be held at Gorecki Dining Center 204 at 7 p.m.

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 College of Saint Benedict, stands in the way of a proposed bypass 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 tells the story of the Schellinger family. Other area family farms and properties were sold to developers for expansion of housing subdivisions. Instead of following this path, the Schellingers sold 102 acres of pristine woodlands to the DNR. The next generation of the family and the neighbors will continue to have access to the land and enjoy it as it has been for centuries.