- Minnesota's oldest the state park is huge.

We're gonna be exploring just a tiny part of it today and probably trying to hide between raindrops.

Now, of course, we'll be walking across its most famous feature, Mississippi headwaters, but we'll also be discovering other treasures around the park with on the go artists, Pam Luer.

Let's go Minnesota.

(upbeat music) - [Male Voice] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(strumming music) - [Brenda] What's the weather gonna be today?

- You know, we may have some periods of showers, but the birds are singing again.

The sky is getting kind of clear and I think that we're going to be okay for a few hours before the rain comes again.

But I don't care.

Rain is sometimes the best days for a hike because the wildlife comes out pretty close and most of the people stay off the trails.

So it's a good chance to see raccoons, black bears, deer, birds, you name it.

You usually can see it in a rainy day.

- Excellent.

And plus you just don't get as sweaty.

- Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Anytime we have a building project, we have a certain percent of money that goes for arts.

And the particular piece of artwork we have here at the Mary Gibbs Center is known as the Heartwaters-Caretaker Woman.

It was produced by an Ojibwa artist and in the Ojibwa culture, the Mississippi river is a part of the Heartwaters.

It's in the center of our nation, and it's very important.

And women are very important in the Ojibwa community.

And so she represents the mother earth and the turtles you see emerging are the turtles that brought the mud up to actually form the earth that we now live on today.

And it's a beautiful piece of art.

People love it.

And as you can see, it's getting shiny from people touching it repeatedly because they just... We're drawn to it.

It's a beautiful piece of art.

(whistling and strumming music) And here we are at the headwaters of the Mississippi river, on the left side, Lake Itasca and on the right is the mighty Mississippi.

As it starts its journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

People always say Ponce de Leon found the fountain of youth in Florida.

But I think it's really here because it doesn't matter what age a person is.

(indistinct) becomes like a little kid again, they just get excited.

They got to take their shoes off.

They got to stand in the middle of the river and enjoy it.

So we really have the fountain of youth here at Itasca.

- Fountain of youth that makes me want to walk across it right now.

- Take the shoes off, get the blessings of the Mississippi.

- Let's do it.

Yeah.

Fountain of youth.

I'm all for that.

Let's go get.

- [Connie] And that is wild rice.

A lot of people will ask me what that soft grass is.

- [Brenda] Yeah.

- [Connie] That's all wild rice, just emerging off the surface of the lake and come about August, it'll have risen up.

It'll have set up its seed heads and it'll get quite tall.

So when you canoe, it gets quite hard to canoe through that.

- Should we go across to cross the rocks?

Yes?

No?

Yes?

Maybe?

- Yeah, you can go.

I wanna do the log.

- [Brenda] You're gonna do the log?

Is it better with shoes or barefoot?

- [Connie] Today, they're pretty slippery, I don't know.

- [Brenda] I didn't bring a change of clothes just in case this goes bad.

This is a cool little root structure right here on this tree.

(water gurgling over rocks) See how this goes.

Coming with me?

- [Karen] Sure.

- Yeah.

- Quite a way anyway.

Our families have been doing this forever.

- Yeah, I came across with my family.

- [Karen] Sure.

- Gosh, long time ago now.

Oh yeah.

That's nice and slippery.

Ooh boy, I don't know.

(water softly gurgling over rocks) I made it that far.

(water softly gurgling over rocks) I don't have any hands here.

- No, you don't.

- [Brenda] It actually, it feels really good on the feet.

Doesn't it?

- [Karen] Yes it does.

And you can see really the water is so high this year.

That that's why it's still, usually by this time of year, - [Brenda] Yeah.

- it's much lower, It's easy to walk across.

- Yeah, I think last time I was here, it was a lot lower.

- A lot lower.

- Yeah - I'm on the West side and you're on the East side of the US.

Wait, actually there's a picture where Jacob Brower and another man are reaching across from the West side to the East side and they're shaking hands.

We just reproduced 110-year old photo.

- [Gary1] My God.

(water softly gurgling over rocks) - All right.

See if we can finish the job safely.

Oh, wow.

Look how pretty this rock is.

It looks like a giant egg.

- The algae, the moss.

- So Stephanie, do you guys care if I put this under water and take a picture?

(water softly gurgling over rocks) (Brenda laughing) (water softly gurgling over rocks) I'm going to get a shot of you from underwater.

Okay, go for it.

(water softly gurgling over rocks) That looks pretty cool.

(water softly gurgling over rocks) Woo, success.

Yes.

The fountain of youth is mine.

- [Pam] Wow, I can't believe - [Brenda] Look at this, the sun came out.

- [Pam] I can't believe the sun came out.

- Look at us and our sunny faces.

- It's shocking.

- It's pretty amazing.

The sun actually came out today.

- And it's a nice surprise.

- Yes.

But I still have lots of layers going on here.

Got a shirt, a jacket, the tank shop.

'Cause honestly you just have no idea what's gonna happen.

- The hat, the bug spray.

- The hat, the bug spray.

(both chuckling) I don't have sunglasses.

No sunglasses.

- Sunglasses.

- Anything could happen out there.

- Okay.

- I can hear loons.

- Well, we now know each other.

- Did you hear that?

- So now Why don't we go all hike together.

- We're hoping for some good breeze off the lake today.

- [Brenda] Oh yeah, will that help keep the bugs down a little bit?

- Yeah, it will.

- The breeze just came up.

- It did.

That's where I think these are lady luck.

'Cause did you notice when they showed up, the sun came out, the breeze started blowing, and the loons started calling.

Why don't we head on down the steps.

- Okay.

- And why don't we get going on the Brower trail?

- [Brenda] Okay.

- [Connie] Just watch out.

They might be a little slippery from the rain this morning.

- [Brenda] So this takes us to the Peace Pipe Vista.

- Yeah, we're heading down to Peace Pipe Vista and we have a beautiful view of Lake Itasca.

Actually, I really like this spot in the evening because you're facing West and the sunsets are gorgeous.

- [Brenda] Oh, good to know.

- Yeah.

It's a awesome spot.

It's kind of cute because a lot of brides had been proposed to at this site.

Sometimes you'll be walking down here just to look out over the Vista and all of a sudden there's some people getting married.

So they do that here.

They do it out at the headwaters.

It's like... You're kind of the original wedding crashers.

- It symbolizes the beginning.

- Yes, it does - The headwaters.

- I have to chuckle because when I got married, my husband carried me across the rocks in his arms to bless our marriage.

And I said, but marriages are two way streets.

So when we got on the West side, I said, jump on my back.

'Cause I can't carry you in my arms.

So I carried him across the river on my back and we've had a very blessed marriage, we've been together for it'll be 22 years.

- [Brenda] Yeah.

That's beautiful.

And why is it called Peace Pipe?

- Well, it's actually a misspelling.

It's not supposed to be P-E-A-C-E, No Peace treaties were signed here.

It is actually for pieces of pipe.

Groundwater feeds Lake Itasca 60% and right where we're standing, that water will actually come out of the ground right below us.

And it'll slowly trickle down the slope into Lake Itasca.

And the early homesteaders and pioneers, they would tap pieces of pipe into those springs to collect that fresh water.

- [Brenda] Yeah.

- Because it was purified - [Brenda] Sure - And it was coming out at 45 degrees and on a hot summer day, it was great.

- Right.

- When the state of Minnesota was doing a survey in the 19-teens to collect place names.

And the early homesteaders were from Europe.

So there was a heavy German and Swedish and Norwegian accent.

And with the lilt that you pick up from this area, they heard "Pieces of pipe", but they didn't hear the word "Of".

And so they thought it was "Peace Pipe" and the guy miss wrote it down, never asked the locals for a spelling correction and it's been misnamed.

So it's really "Pieces of Pipe."

And-- - [Brenda] Oh, that's pretty funny.

- [Connie] We've never gone looking if there still are pieces of pipe here.

(soft strumming music) Leaves of three, this one is okay.

But like right in front of them where it's distinctly just three individual leaflets.

That is your poison ivy.

- [Brenda] Basically stay on the trails.

Is what she's saying.

- [Karen] That's good advice.

- [Pam] That's what am hearing - [Brenda] Yeah.

- [Pam] Not touch anything.

- [Brenda] Avoid green things.

- [Pam] This is Poison Ivy?

- [Brenda] I think so.

Yes.

This one right here.

Does it have like a woody stem?

And it's got the leaves of three.

Leaves of three, let it be.

(strumming music) What kind of art do you do?

- I've been really focused on nature sketchbooks for the last few years.

What I love about it is it gets me connected to nature.

- [Brenda] Yeah.

- [Pam] It gets me outdoors.

And I get to find ways to be more connected to nature than I normally would if I was just working in my studio.

- [Brenda] Is there like a certain type of nature scene that you go for?

Oh, this is really pretty look at this.

- [Pam] Not necessarily.

These are cool.

I spend more time looking at plants, - [Brenda] Okay.

- [Pam] Leaves and trees and-- - How about mosquitoes and black flies.

- Yeah.

That would be an intimate subject matter.

(laughing) I do work out in Utah a little bit, so I like the change of palette out there.

It's all cinnamon and paprika and here it's just so green.

- I love that, cinnamon and paprika.

I've never been very good at describing colors, but-- - But you know what I meant?

- I totally know what you meant though, that was great.

So what colors would you call it here?

Like what colors are you seeing?

- [Pam] This is just lush, verdant green.

And especially this year.

I have to say I've never witnessed bugs like this before.

- Yeah, they're swarming.

Wow.

Yeah.

I haven't inhaled any yet though.

- No me either.

- But close.

Are you getting bit?

- You know what?

I'm not actually, - Okay.

- [Pam] But they are-- - [Connie] All right.

Anybody need some ammunition?

AKA bug spray?

- [Pam] Yeah, bug spray alert.

- [Brenda] Ooh.

Just keep moving.

- [Connie] Just putting on some insect repellent.

I had to re-doctor up.

I did it at... - [Brenda] Thank you other Gary, - [Connie] ... 7:30 this morning.

- [Brenda] Oh, okay.

It's more like they're not really biting right now.

They're just kind of like all over you.

Tell me a little bit about the pines in Preachers grove.

- [Connie] Preachers Grove to me is a really neat spot.

Those are red pine, which is the state tree of Minnesota.

But when you look at the core rings out of those trees, if you take a core ring and count the growth rings, those trees began their life in 1717.

And you think about it, Ben Franklin wasn't even born in 1717.

So they have seen a lot of life in this country.

- [Pam] I think that one of the things that people like about nature sketchbooks when I teach is they carve out this time to really connect and sit still and just look, which is almost meditative.

- [Brenda] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Pam] And plus you get to learn a skill or practice a skill.

And what I like about the sketchbooks too, is that it's not a finished perfect painting.

It's gathering information, taking notes.

And I always say you might not draw better, but you will see better.

- [Brenda] Okay.

(strumming music) If we're lucky we might get to see a thorny pig today.

However, they're not part of the pig family at all.

The porcupine is actually North America's second largest rodent.

Clarissa Schrooten, tells us more about the myths and facts of this shy creature.

- Porcupine's a very interesting animal just because of the fact that they're fully equipped with a back full of armor up all times called their quills, which you also can see as they have these long guard hair.

So something brushes those guard hairs, they'll brandish up their quills.

Now brandishing their quills is just them raising them up.

Kind of like goosebumps for us with our hair.

It is a complete myth that porcupines can shoot their quills.

You actually have to, as a predator, make contact with those quills.

And then they're released from their skin and stuck into the paw or the mouth.

They can whip their tail, that's the closest they get to shooting their quills.

Now, one interesting fact that most people don't know about porcupines, is that they're actually really good climbers.

I like to call them the monkey of Minnesota because we don't have primates in Minnesota, but porcupines do a good job climbing and hanging out in trees.

So if you're lucky enough to see one of these porcupines in the wild, just keep your distance from them and just observe them doing what they do, climbing around in the trees and being the monkey in Minnesota.

I'm Clarissa Schrooten from Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo.

And I encourage everyone to get out and enjoy the outdoors.

- You guys ready to get some lunch?

- Wow, yes.

Lunch, we got to feed.

- I'm starving.

- Those mosquitoes.

They took all of our blood.

- Minnesota summers are all too short and sometimes you have to do battle against pesky insects.

Learn how to gain the upper hand against mosquitoes and deer flies on your next adventure.

At one time my dad lived on (indistinct).

There's a little town called (indistinct).

And I remember once hanging out in the woods and I went back and I counted I had like 64 mosquito bites, I was like 10.

But I think it like made me immune somehow, like ever since then they don't always seem - [Connie] They do talk - [Brenda] bother me that much - about that though, that people over time, like as the Summer progresses, when you have been bitten, your body does build up some defenses.

- I really feel like it did cause they don't seem to bug me.

- But you know, look at all of us, we survived and now we have this battle story we can share about how we walked the Brower trail in the middle of July, - And we survived.

- After a rainstorm with 10 million bugs.

And then, you know, next week when you tell it it'll be a hundred million, and then two hundred million.

- It's like fishing in Minnesota (indistinct crosstalk) - [Pam] If you sit next to somebody that mosquitoes love.

- [Connie] They can see ultra violet and they can see the carbon dioxide, and they can see kind of like your body aura - [Brenda] Okay.

a little more, like when you can see...

They see a different light spectrum than we do and they're picking up on your CO2.

- Okay.

- That, and they love light and bright blue.

So Gary is wearing the absolute worst colored shirt today.

The other good part about Gary is... - Oh, there's a good part, I love it - He's got the bright blue and he's taller than me.

- Right, so the lightning will hit me first too.

- I get the dark blue, you got the light blue.

We're both like out of luck because we're wearing the wrong color shirt, but they go for me because I talk all the time.

They always call me the mouth of the Mississippi.

'Cause I can't not talk.

And it's like I'm just charging all this CO2.

Seriously as I'm talking, I'm discharging a lot of CO2 and that's the other thing is people don't realize when you're hiking, your instinct is to do this, to fan bugs away.

Don't do that because your spreading out your carbon dioxide pattern-- - [Brenda] You're like come here.

- You are.

- Attracting more and more - Exactly.

So you have to actually kind of... What I do is usually like a lot of times you'll see, all I do is like a finger flick to flick them off so that I'm making the least amount of motions, so I'm not spreading out my billboard come and feed on me.

- Good to know.

- [Gary] So Pam is gonna wow us now, - [Brenda] Pam's gonna wow us now.

- [Pam] No pressure.

- [Gary] Teach me how to make a better stick man.

- [Brenda] A little sketch action.

- [Pam] We're gonna do some nature sketching.

- [Karen] So we're gonna do nature sketching, excellent.

- So you guys are gonna do some drawing and we're gonna to do it in ways that...

The goal for me is never to have a finished perfect piece of art that you put on your wall, but to fill books with images of things that you've collected on hikes, bikes, your own garden, your own front steps.

And so I like to have pieces that have all kinds of information on them.

- [Brenda] Looks beautiful.

- I like to have the palette in here, maybe some note taking, up close and personal and then pull way back and get the Vista, abstract colors if you want.

I always like to have a play with a palette right here, with the colored pencils it's so easy to do.

A lot of times I'll try to do a black and white with the same...

So should we get started?

You guys ready?

- We should be using water from the Mississippi headwaters.

(strumming music) - [Pam] Right now I really enjoy working in sketchbooks more than I...

I used to paint quite large.

I did a lot of pastels and house paint on sandpaper, in the winter, it's harder to work from life outdoors.

So I do bring a lot of it in.

My studio is in our home and I like working at home very much because I'm more productive and it's right there for me all the time.

For me, the more nimble I can be with my materials will take me outside more and it'll keep me more connected to my subject matter, which is nature.

I can carry it around.

I can throw it in my bag.

I can sit on the front steps when the sun goes down and I'm still working.

And the more you work, the less precious it becomes because if you know you're gonna do it again and again, and again, it feels less critical and you do become a better artist because you're always using your skills.

It seems like we're on the move more and we have less opportunities to pause.

And did you hear that bird or look at the tree that's changing already and those little tiny, natural things that are happening all around us.

And so as a kid who was kind of a little bit more of a tomboy, I felt frustrated that I wasn't outside enough and I wanted to connect more.

And I also felt frustrated I wasn't doing enough for my artwork.

And so for me, I just tried to put myself outside more and more and more.

It's interesting, the technical process for me has definitely changed through the years.

And I feel like, I think in terms of color and texture first.

For sure color hits me first.

And that draws me...

I'm not saying a riot of color, usually it's very subtle.

And so it would be texture and light and how something is lit naturally.

You know, it's like, Oh, did you see the way the light is hitting the side of that tree?

You're going to have to draw a tree or stop and look at it longer.

My memories of hiking Itasca state park was the incredible amount of green.

I thought to myself, there are people that live in different parts of the world that have never seen this much green.

It is like you were in a bubble of all kinds of lush green and it had just rained.

And so it had that kind of stormy air quality.

So colors were super rich and thick.

I would love to see some of the sketchbooks published.

I would love to see that, that would make me feel very happy, proud.

It's like, wow, look at all this work.

Yeah.

- All right.

We have wrapped up our sketching and we're gonna head on over and check out the old timers cabin.

Tell me what is exactly the old timer's cabin.

- The old timer's cabin it's a really neat building.

It was built in the 1930s by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

And it only took four logs to make one wall.

- Excellent.

And you can stand in it.

- You bet you can stand in it.

You don't have to get on your hands and knees because these are some really big trees.

- [Brenda] Sweet.

Let's go check it out.

So how tall do you think each log is?

There must be like...

If you're using your body to measure the height.

- Oh gosh.

It's almost - 20 to 24 inches.

- Oh, you're very mathematic.

- [Brenda] Gary, how tall are you?

- 6'3" - 6'3"?

Four logs tall is one Gary height.

- That Gary.

- That Gary.

- That Gary.

Both Garys really.

- So what we have is...

This one is it's a saddle notch log.

You can see how they curved the log that sits on top, right here.

They curved out the bottom so that it would sit and fit snuggling on the log below it.

That's a really tricky cut.

And so for these young boys when we were visiting with one of the gentlemen who worked on this cabin, he said they had to take these logs up and down 20 or 30 times to try and get that curve just right.

So it would fit really snug.

- [Brenda] I'm gonna fall.

I love the smell.

Kind of got that old wood smell to it.

So how old is this cabin?

- This one was built in 1933-34.

- Okay.

I know isn't that great.

- It was one of the very first Civilian Conservation Corps projects here in Itasca State Park.

- [Brenda] Look at these beams on the ceiling.

- [Karen] What is the story here?

- They had cut the trees down in the winter and brought them across the lake ice with a team of horses and then brought them up on the bank to construct the cabin itself.

All the metal work was done here in the park by expert blacksmiths.

And they were teaching the young guys...

The CCC boys were like 18 to 24.

And they were teaching them how to do metal work.

So it could be a skill they could use when they left the camp.

(strumming music) - With more than 32,000 acres in the boundaries of this park, you could spend a lifetime exploring here and it happened to turn into a beautiful day.

So we're gonna keep going.

You guys ready?

- You bet.

- All right.

Until next time let's go in Minnesota.

(strumming music) So we couldn't leave without checking out the fire tower.

(soft strumming music) They really are bad.

Okay, Minnesota summers are all too short and sometimes you have to do battle against pesky insects.

I feel them around me, but they're not really bugging me that much.

No pun intended or maybe pun intended.

How many logs tall am I?

Let's see.

I mean, if I was raised up.

I'm three logs tall?

Two and a half?

I'm only two and a half tall?

That's kind of sad, actually.

(laughing) Here it is the headwaters to the mighty Mississippi coming out of Lake Itasca.

Let's walk across it.

(laughing) Okay, you ready?

Okay.

Here it is the headwaters to the mighty Mississippi river, Mississippi, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I come in.

Okay.

Here it is, the headwaters to the mighty Mississippi river.

- [Male Voice] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(soft music)