As a little girl, Betty Vos Hemstad's mother grew a prolific garden with acres of flowers blanketing the yard, lining the walkway and spilling out of flowerbeds.
"You didn't go to the florist when you got married, you went to Henrietta's garden," Vos Hemstad recalls of her mother's landscape. She remembers how people would come asking for gladiolas and her mother would cut every last stem she had and give them all away. "I would say 'Mother, how can you cut them all?" She would say, 'for everyone I give, I get two back.'"
It's a philosophy Vos Hemstad carried with her through the years. And if it's true, she is due a lifetime of bouquets.
Vos Hemstad's first book, Wildflowers of the Boundary Waters: Hiking Through the Seasons (Minnesota Historical Society, May 2009), contains more than 620 photos of 140 types of native flowers. She took every photo herself with her trusty Olympus 35mm camera on Kodachrome film; the project took her more than 20 years.
She considers each photograph a gift to people who will never be able to see one of Minnesota's most beloved areas--physically handicapped people who have trouble with mobility, people who live across the country etc.--as well as people who have experience the North Shore, but who want a closer look.
"It's like sharing, and I want people to see what I have seen, the wonder in wildflowers," says the self-taught amateur photographer. "it's so satisfying to think that [the book is] actually here.It feels like I'm smiling inside."
As she discusses her book over a cup of tea and slice of graham cracker pie at Pearson's Edina Restaurant, she seems more like a cookie-baking grandma than an intrepid nature explorer and author. In fact she is admittedly overwhelmed with the attention the book has already garnered (including 16 publicity events around the state), but she couldn't be more proud of her two decades labor of love.
Above all she hopes it encourages readers to get out and discover the bliss she has found in one of the most revered natural areas in the country.
"What you have on a wilderness trail is silence, and the world doesn't have enough of that anymore," she says. "That's something I really wish people could catch onto: this is just sitting there, waiting for them, Nature is so friendly."
Keeping the Wild in Wildflower
Vos Hemstad never really intended to write a book.
When her family bought property on the Gunflint Trail in the mid-1970s, their cabin instantly became one of her favorite places. "When I would come back [to Edina], I'd feel like part of me was missing," she says. "I started taking photographs and plastering them all over my refrigerator so that when I was home, I could remember [the northern landscape]."
Her photographs were different than most people's snapshots however. Vos Hemstad insisted on capturing nature in its truest form--in all types of light and weather.
"Most wildflower books are just the 'pretty' flowers, but I try to keep the 'wild' in 'wildflowers'" she says. "It's as you would see them in the wild, not as you imagine them in a field guide. You see them as they grow, where they grow."
Vos Hemstad was inspired to capture a "raw" look at nature the day she observed a simple daisy. At first glance, the seedhead is rather unattractive, but upon further inspection, the inside contains hundreds of tiny little pieces in the shape of daisy flowers. "A number of wildflowers will have these patterns that most people have never seen. I have to show this to others, so they can see what I saw. I suppose that sounds sort of cutesy...but that's the truth."
So, she began chronicling the life cycle of more than 100 wildflowers in the Boundary Waters. it is a difficult project, seeing as how some flowers only bloom for about two weeks and some years she would only get to her cabin once a month. The thrill of the search became addictive.
"It doesn't seem like much to someone who hasn't tried to do this, but you have to find these flowers in all their seasons," she says. "It was like...like a game. It becomes all-consuming to find them all."
To this day she remembers exactly when and where she took each picture. The oldest of the photos in the book was taken in 1984.
"Her enthusiasm is not the kind that melts away," says Sue Kerfoot, Vos Hemstad's long-time friend and North Shore neighbor. "I know for a fact she has taken pictures of wildflowers for over 30 years, yet just last summer, I saw her taking more pictures because she did not have that 'perfect photo' of a particular flower for her book."
Through a chance relationship between one of Vos Hemstad's daughters and someone at the Minnesota Historical Society, Vos Hemstad ended up making a deal to compile her photos into a type of field guide.
"I've often heard from many Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness enthusiasts that they'd like nothing more than a wise companion to walk along the trails with them," Says Pamela J. McClanahan, director of Minnesota Historical Society Press and Borealis books. "Well Betty does that for us."
The book is intuitively designed--flowers are grouped by when they bloom and their color. Each two-page spread features a wide, full-field shot on the left-hand side--"as you would see it if you were on a hike," Vos Hemstad explains--and several different close-up shots on the right. A full-flower photo is on the edge of the right-hand pages--where your thumb would naturally rest if you were flipping through books for easy reference.
Vos Hemstad says writing the text for the book was the hardest part; she would confine herself to a comfy chair each day until she'd written about three different flowers on not cards. She wrote in first-person style, as if she were talking to a friend.
An Advocate for the City and Country
Since Ron, Betty's husband of 51 years, retired from his law career 15 years ago, the couple has called their cabin "home" every April through November. Betty prides herself on being just as ensconced in the Boundary Waters community as she is in Edina.
The Hemstads have lived in Edina since 1968. All three of their children graduated from Edina High School. In 2008, Betty received the Edina Foundation Board's volunteer award for her quarter-century of service. She and her husband received the Mayor's Award for co-chairing the foundation's 1981 Edinamite fundraiser that coincided with Southdale's 25th anniversary celebration. She also has earned praise for helping raise money to build the Edina History Museum.
Up North, Vos Hemstad was the first president of the Gunflint Trail Historical Society, and currently serves as chairwoman of the Chik-Wauk museum and Nature Center Committee, helping to restore a historic stone lodge and convert it into a museum.
And now she can add author to that list. She will be the first to admit how unlikely it seems for a woman in her mid-70s with no formal training in writing or photography to publish a book about wildflowers, but she believes it was written in her fate from the beginning. Aptly named by the immigrants who first settled there, Vos Hemstad's hometown, Roseland, Minn., was known for its abundance of wildflowers.
"It gives me goosebumps," she says of the connection between her past and her new found career. "It just seems like it was meant to be."
