Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.

org [Music] Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/Director Scott Knudson.

In this episode we joined the dedicated volunteers of the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway Board as they save the state flower from road construction.

I'm Shirley Gilmore.

I have been living in the Blackduck area for 34 years and I became aware of the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway in about 2005 and I had a very special reason for wanting to get involved with the byway before the highway construction that I was hearing about was going to take place.

Lady slippers are the state flower.

They are protected, they're not necessarily endangered, but they're protected and they don't really often move well, you know, the conditions have to be just right.

So working with the biologists at the Chippewa National Forest and other groups we felt that rather than just let them be destroyed, and in spite of how extensive it was, it seemed like a very worthwhile project.

I meet people from the Twin Cities who've never seen one in the wild or never seen one period because they're not really normally grown.

Some nurseries do have them.

The road was very narrow so they wanted to expand the road and they needed to completely redo it, redo the bridges and things like that, but the main problem was it was going to be expanded and the Lady Slippers would have been dug up.

Then maybe they'd come back after 15 years of the seeds that were able to take root and the leftovers were able to sprout.

After all it had just been named the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway so it's been well known for its abundance of lady slippers, even in this area where we have a fair number.

So what we did at the time was we went ahead and removed the lady slippers from where they were along the roadway, big beds of them and put them in a safekeeping spot along the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway.

I'm Anne Slowinski.

I joined the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway committee about four years ago.

The Lady Slipper Scenic Byway committee is a group, we're nonprofit, and it was formed to help protect and promote the lady slippers along the scenic byway, which is the highway between Cass Lake and Blackduck.

So there was going to be construction on the site and there was always a beautiful road to see lady slippers on, so the community decided we needed to do something to protect those and I wasn't a part of any of that, that was many years ago but they formed this group of volunteers to help protect the lady slippers to move them.

We worked with the forestry, worked with the highway department, the county highway department to coordinate getting these lady slippers out and then eventually replanting them.

Boozhoo, my name is Sally Fineday, my Ojibwe name is Oshikawebie, that's how you say my name is one who stands alone, or one who crosses over, it's been interpreted twice.

So I'm on the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway Board since I moved back here in 2007 and one of my friends was on the board but she couldn't do it any longer and she didn't live on the Lady Slipper or near it so she said would you mind being on the board and I'm like I'd love to.

It's, you know, this is my home.

So I've been on since about 2007.

I think what everybody needs to know is that this is a team effort, there's a lot of people involved, it's not only us.

It's the forest service and it's the county workers.

It's the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

There's a lot of people invested in what we do here on the Lady Slipper and within the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway.

I also know that there are a lot of people, citizens that live here, who honestly it's why we live here.

It's because we live in the forest.

It's because of the lady slippers, it's because of the deer, it's because of the bear, it's because of the raccoon.

Just, you know, we live here and it's beautiful.

We were sitting here just a minute ago and we heard the loon.

So, you know, I mean this is why we live here and this is what we love about our location and we are proud of the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway.

The reason that I became involved with the board dates back to 1989.

I'd become familiar with the area.

I was interested in photography, doing a lot of photography in the late ' 80s and I had taken a number of seminars with the Blacklock family of photographers.

Along the way I got acquainted with and became friends with Nadine Blacklock.

In 1989 she was working on a revised edition, photography for a revised edition, of the book The Hidden Forest that was originally authored by Sigrid Olsen with the original photographs by her father-in-law, Les Blacklock.

And she was doing new photography because photography reproduction had come a long way and they thought the book was worth reissuing.

She wanted to be in this area when the lady slippers were blooming, so I arranged for her to come visit me and we're out exploring and we found, she found, this gorgeous group of lady slippers along the Scenic Byway.

She spent the better part of an hour.

We set up by the group of lady slippers, she had all kinds of equipment, the dark cloth that I was holding in place and a diffusion tent so the sun would be just right.

It took the better part of an hour and she got a great photograph and I later found out that it was going to be the cover of the book, that particular photograph.

I was thrilled when I found out it was going to be the cover.

The original book was The Hidden Forest but the photo reproduction is much better in the new version.

In 1989, sadly, Nadine was killed in an auto accident.

So somehow that group of lady slippers became very special to me and I keep checking on it.

It came back every year, it grew in size, and I started hearing about reconstruction of the highway.

I decided to get a little more involved and investigate and I discovered that there was such a thing as a Scenic Byway Board and I got involved.

So then, like I said, I started hearing about construction, started to get involved with the lady slipper group and decided that I've got to do something.

Unfortunately, this particular group did have to be moved.

They are out there, so they are preserved.

Hello, I'm Steve Ross.

I am president of the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway Committee.

We are at the north interpretive site on Lady Slipper Scenic Byway.

These sites are designed so that people can stop along the way while they're driving up the Scenic Byway and take in the wildflowers and the sites and learn a little bit about what is here in northern Minnesota.

The Scenic Byway was originally a Forest Service Scenic Byway.

It got designated a State Scenic Byway and they had a renaming contest and Lady Slipper Scenic Byway rose to the top and that's what it became.

The interpretive sites are designed to help people find lady slippers easier and we have planted quite a few lady slippers near the boardwalk, which we will take you down to.

This is the latest addition to our interpretive signs.

Judy Rossi was a valued member of our Lady Slipper group and unfortunately died in the last couple years.

She was so instrumental in helping us get flowers over to this boardwalk and we all decided that we wanted to dedicate the boardwalk to her.

Judy Rossi was a lady that grew up in northern Minnesota but moved to the Cities for most of her life and she and her husband moved back to Blackduck probably 10 years ago.

She was born on Earth Day and so Earth Day was one of her missions.

She became involved with our group because they lived right along the Scenic Byway and became very instrumental in the transplant process.

We are here on the boardwalk, it is handicap accessible, and they are planted on either side so that you can actually easily see them.

And so that later on, when you go down the Scenic Byway or anywhere else, you can see what they look like and you can spot them.

We would appreciate if people would stay on this boardwalk because the flora would be damaged if you get off it and this is for everyone and so please stay on the boardwalk.

Well, number one, you get to see the Chippewa National Forest in all of its grandness and then of course the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway interpretive centers.

The one that's near the Pennington store, that one has a boardwalk, and it's fascinating.

I go there all the time and look and people are always there and there's a really good description of what the lady slippers are and how they are in the horticulture world and you know a scientific explanation and etc.

Then you go down to the interpretive center down by the Mississippi River and that one has a history of the people that have lived here for generations.

That's my family, the Finedays.

I think that's important too, to introduce people to the culture, that you're not only in the Chippewa National Forest but there's also people that live here who have been here for a long time and who are Ojibwe.

So I think that being a part of the group and saving the lady slippers has really been an investment in our future here at Leech Lake and in the Chippewa National Forest to recognize that we want to preserve what we have but we also want to show it and we want people to come here and visit and see the showy lady slippers but we also are very careful with what we do and how we do it.

I think what I know about all of our Ojibwe teachings are there's a story for everything.

There was a man named Jimmy Jackson, he was a traditional healer but he was also a storyteller.

He had the best stories about everything.

He could tell you why the loon has red eyes, you know, things like that.

So there are stories for everything.

With Leech Lake people, in our Ojibwe language and the way that we describe things, that's what it is, the Ojibwe language is a descriptive language.

So the lady slipper story is that the whole village had become ill and directions were for a person to go and seek out medicines and everybody was so sick the only one that went was a child, a little girl, and it was wintertime and she lost her moccasins or she ended up barefoot and her feet started to bleed and she left a trail of footprints, blood footprints, and where she left a trail the next year was where the lady slippers grew.

In 2006 a group of us with the botanist from the Chippewa National Forest did surveys.

We would go up and down the road with a GPS and locate all the existing colonies or plants and mark them on field notes.

I was the scribe, usually.

I'd mark them on the field notes, they took that data and we actually input it into a spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet was able to be translated into graphic information system mapping.

That data was also shared with the county highway department so they could actually put an overlay of lady slipper locations on the highway construction plans when it got to that point.

So there were three years of actually just mapping locations just to make sure they were consistent and make sure we caught all the locations.

The highway was reconstructed in five phases.

So with the first transplant in 2009 to a holding area that was actually identified by one of our members and the Forest Service botanist.

He decided that would be a great habitat for storing the lady slippers until they could go back out on the road.

You walk into the site and you don't see anything at first and then all of a sudden you look up and there's lady slippers everywhere.

You have to watch where you step because some of them are growing outside the pens that were naturally there cuz they picked a spot that naturally had some lady slippers in it.

But then you look up and they're just all over and these pens are just amazing how they were built in such a rustic way.

At the time there was a program at Camp Rabideau called the Rabideau Conservation and Learning Academy and they had youth working there in the summer.

So those youth were part of our project off and on at least in the early years, and they were taught how to make these sapling fences for holding pens for the lady slippers and that was a fascinating process.

John Parmiter had taught them to cut young saplings that were very bendable and how to weave them amongst the existing trees to make fences to keep the deer out because deer do like lady slippers.

When I joined the group I helped Shirley, we were trying to drive along the highway and find spots that looked like they would be a good place to replant the lady slippers at, because with the road changes some of the ground had changed and so we kind of were looking for spots that they came from, especially to put them back where they were, but sometimes with the road construction they didn't look like such a good spot to plant them anymore.

So then we just were looking for the best possible spots.

Actually that's okay, probably back away to the big tree.

We're trying to find the middle of where they were planted on either side.

Working with Shirley was wonderful.

She is so dedicated to this and put in so much work but I was kind of her assistant and trainee.

I was running the GPS for her, which I had to learn how to use, and we would drive along and we would get out and Shirley would look at it and walk up and down.

And she was like she was a lady slipper herself trying to find where she would want to be planted and grow.

So then we would decide on the spots and write down the waypoints of the GPS of where we thought they should be replanted at.

With the holding pens in place, they started removing lady slippers, but then that summer program ended before they were done and the Conservation Corps of Minnesota finished that project.

So we had to just kind of leapfrog with the county.

We would put them back.

Unfortunately we weren't able to put the 2009 lady siippers back until after we had to rescue the 2010 lady slippers, so we had a lot of lady slippers in storage and truly they did thrive.

It was a great place to store them.

So then when it was time to actually do the planting, that's a lot of heavy work, much shovels involved, so through some of our grant money we hired a group, I believe it was in the Civilian Conservation Corps, but they came down for a week and they used the shovels.

We were in the holding pen with them and I told them just start digging, there's so many just start digging.

It's heavy.

The bigger you get the heavier they are.

It's too big.

No that's almost easier with your hands.

Yeah it's easier with your hands.

The lady slippers is actually rhizomes.

So when we actually started moving the lady slippers, actually the Rabideau youth crew figured out how to do this.

They grow in groups, for the most part, and you try to keep the root balls kind of intact.

Some are so large you have to divide them and you dig well under the roots to get all the soil.

You can because they like where they are and they do require a certain fungus to thrive or grow.

They'd take about four people on shovels and lift the group up onto a a tarp, wrap the tarp around it, and bundle it up good.

And then we put them in a trailer packed full of lady slippers and you move them to the site where they had to be put back in the ground.

So the plants were carefully put onto tarps, careful as we could.

When we were digging them you need to get enough of the root ball because there's a mycelium layer that you need to get as much of that fungal content as possible because they need that to grow.

So they were carefully put on tarps and put on a trailer and then we would need to go find these GPS spots again and physically plant them.

So right here for now but just kind of wrap them up carefully so you don't hurt the stems, but just do that so that it retains the moisture.

Nice and safe.

We're going to be close here.

Should we try this clump right there?

Yeah I like that.

There's more space.

He said leave six or seven inches from the root.

I went on one excursion and helped one time and that was pretty interesting because we, along with a youth group, and we went there and we actually with a shovel picked up the lady slippers, put them on a tarp, and then carried them to a truck and then took them to our site, unpacked them and replanted them at a safe location.

So we figured just try this first just to get you guys going and get a feel for it.

Awesome.

So thank you, there you go.

Success rate and survival rates, I mean I've looked online, I've asked Shirley and we don't see any numbers.

We don't know of a project of this size that has been done.

There's been some projects but we don't know any of the survival rates that I've ever heard or found.

Good site.

Plant bunches on top of slope and then so the flag would be the center of that.

Yes.

And then she was saying one to two feet up from the ditch.

Some here, some there.

Magic powder, just a sprinkling.

When the project was first started, it was kind of a feeling that it would maybe be hopeless, that they wouldn't survive, but they have.

So we had a list, when the Conservation Corps came out, I wrote down all the waypoints that we, me and Shirley had picked out and then as we planted them we counted how many groups of plants and how many stems were in each group.

So our survival rate is based on the stem count.

And what we planted was 729 stems, which is a lot of lady slipper plants, and Shirley and I went out counting and we found 617 stems and from that we got the 85% survival rate.

Well my hope is that of course, you know, all the lady slippers at some point will be replaced.

We're still not done doing that, but we need to put them back, and we also need to maybe because it's called the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway maybe because of that people will know more.

You know we're also on the Great River Road so that's a piece of us as well and we really do truly want to maintain what we have.

We want to maintain the culture, we want to preserve what we have, the lady slippers.

I wanted to say about the board and what the board is.

It's all volunteers.

There's been many people in the past that have been on this.

Some have left, new people are coming, we always can use more board members because each board member has their own expertise.

But if you just volunteer and are interested then you can become a board member.

Well, you know, we're getting newer board members now and we are promoting younger people because, you know, we're all like Shirley, our savior and the one who held everything together for us, is now retired.

And for us at the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway we honestly really treasure what we have.

We have to somehow fit ourselves into the next generation, too.

So, for us, in teaching our younger people, the people that are at the table are all interested and invested in the world that we live in and we also know that when we meet it's pretty casual, we have supper, and then after supper we have conversations and we catch up on who's who and what are people doing, so it's really, it's a very good group of people.

I was amazed when I became involved with the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway Board that there was so much else to it.

The lady slippers were my main concern.

It sounds like other areas have had more or less luck in trying to save lady slippers from construction or getting cooperation.

In fact I'm involved with a person right now who's trying to fight City Hall, so to speak, to try to save some lady slippers on their route.

I've been very happy being a volunteer, it's been very rewarding.

Every ounce of work that I put in has been doubly rewarded.

I've met so many people, I've learned so many things.

I've talked to archaeologists, I've talked to botanists, I've talked to all kinds of plant experts, had nature walks to find out what wildflowers we have.

I'm still learning, but seeing the lady slippers when we're doing our survival studies and seeing them in the holding area is the greatest reward, that we're protecting those and they're blooming again.

Thank you so much for watching.

Join us again on Common Ground.

If you have an idea for Common Ground in north central Minnesota, email us at legacy@lptv.org or call 218-333-3014.

To watch Common Ground online visit lptv.org and click shows.

To order episodes or segments of Common Ground call 218-333-3020.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org