Answers:
Betsy commented on the last post with a couple of questions. She probably could have figured out the answers to all of these by doing some clever internet searching but I'll save her the effort.
The Cavity Lake fire is far away from Sawbill, it's ~20 miles straight north of Sawbill. If the fire gets big enough to endanger Sawbill Canoe Outfitters it will have burned up most of the BWCA. However, they can easily see the smoke plume at Sawbill and occasionally can smell the smoke. The fire has burned to the north side of Gabimichigami Lake which is one lake to the north of Little Saganaga.
Apparently it has consumed 31 square miles of BWCA and 60 campsites have been "destroyed" but no one has been hurt. MPR reported this morning that the Forest Service was keeping several groups of canoeists in the woods rather than letting them try to exit through Sea Gull lake which is surrounded by the fire. Apparently they're making a plan to supply them with food if that becomes necessary.
The fire was started last Thursday by a lightning strike.
The "blowdown" comment refers to the area affected by a large windstorm in July of 1999 (the same weekend we moved into this house). It was a "straight line wind" that carved a long narrow (like 40-50 miles long by around 10 miles wide) swath between Ely MN and Gunflint lake. Most of the large trees in this area were blown flat and now provide lots of fuel for fires.

The above picture was taken shortly after the storm.
Here's a link to a map of the BWCA showing the blowdown area:
http://www.ra.dnr.state.mn.us/bwca/maps/bwcawind_low.gif
This fire is burning right in the northeast end of the blowdown area. There may be some controversy brewing because it looks like the Forest Service may have chosen early on to let the fire burn to consume some of the fuel in the blowdown area so that it wouldn't be available for future fires. If it gets out of hand I'm sure the conspiracy theorists will go wild.
On the east side of the fire there is a barrier where they have done controlled burns over the last five years. The idea with the controlled burns is they set small fires (in the winter when they can control them) to burn up the available fuel. That way if there is a fire in the area there are ready made barriers to keep the fire from spreading. So because of these controlled burns they think they can keep the fire from going very far to the east (outside the BWCA) where the Gunflint Trail and lots of cabins, lodges and outfitters are.
It appears that the main concern at this point is that it will spread to the North into Canada and the Quetico wilderness. That area is more remote and I think harder to access than where it is right now. Canada has been helping to fight the fires, the yellow twin engine fire bombers in the pictures you can link to from my last post are Canadian firefighting airplanes. They had to pull them out today to fight some other fire in Ontario.
On an unrelated note I got an email asking about the photo in my profile. That is Senor Mumbato, the iconic actor from such films as "The Curse of Senor Mumbato"