Contributors
Andrew Slade
Andrew Slade’s parents first set eyes on each other on the North Shore, and his life has centered there since birth—despite growing up in the Twin Cities. As a kid, he caught nets full of smelt at the Cross River, jumped cliffs into the deep pools of an unnamed North Shore river, helped to band woodcock in the open fields of North Shore homesteads, and shut his eyes tight each time the family wagon drove around Silver Cliff (don’t worry— today there’s a tunnel through the cliff and his eyes stay wide open). With his intrepid father, he had to abandon a mid-1970s assault on Carlton Peak due to a lack of recognizable trails.
As a canoe guide and outdoor educator in Ely, he learned that “sauna” is a three-syllable word (sow-ooh-nah). In his twenties, he bushwhacked by snowshoe much of what is now the Manitou-Caribou section of the Superior Hiking Trail. At age 28, in his “before kids” era, he was the editor and lead author of the first Guide to the Superior Hiking Trail.
Slade graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in environmental education and from the University of Montana with a MS in environmental studies. His favorite wildflower is Mertensia paniculata, the native North Shore bluebell.
Andrew has worked for environmental education and preservation organizations on the North Shore since 1992. You can reach him at andrew@thereandbackbooks.com.
Gail Trowbridge
Gail Trowbridge has worked as a copywriter and editor for businesses, individuals and organizations for over 25 years. Gail worked as a promotional writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and went on to receive her advertising agency experience at the MainStreet Group in Arden Hills, Minnesota and at H.T. Klatzky & Associates in Duluth. She has worked as a writer on projects for the University of Minnesota Duluth, the Duluth News Tribune, Lutsen Resort, the Blandin Foundation, Northland College, Minnesota Sea Grant, regional magazines, and the Natural Resources Research Institute. She was editor and writer for The Will and the Way, a regional history book published in 2004, and has served as a ghostwriter and editor for several biographical/historical book projects focusing on northeastern Minnesota. She has worked as a grant writer and editor for the UMD Center for Economic Development, Great Lakes Aquarium, Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra (Duluth), Partners for Violence Prevention (St. Paul), UMD, NRRI, and is currently a grant writer and marketing consultant for Matinee Musicale.
Gail received her BA in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She was a 2011 recipient of a Career Development Grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. Her continuing education has included writing workshops offered through The Loft in Minneapolis, both online and onsite. To stay abreast of rapid changes in social media marketing, she attendeded “Social Media Marketing” in April and June 2011 and “Building a WordPress Blog” in October 2010, both offered by the UMD Center for Economic Development. In 2011, she attended the Social Media Conference offered by the Duluth Chamber. Gail currently serves on the board of Lake Superior Writers and writes their monthly newsletter.
Sally Rauschenfels
As a native of Duluth’s sandy Park Point, Sally has sand in her blood…literally. The neighbors knew her alternately as the girl who rode her red bike everywhere and the master builder of stick houses on the beach. Her fondest childhood memories involve family boating trips and engine breakdowns in lonely Lake Superior South Shore harbor towns like Cornucopia and Port Wing…towns with beautiful sand beaches she could explore all day while her parents waited for engine parts.
Sally was one of a few employees in the early days at Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers, the premiere regional publisher of Northeastern Minnesota books in the 1980s and 1990s, and helped produce and market such early books as Sam Cook’s Up North and Quiet Magic. While acting as production coordinator for the publisher, she was drawn to book design and inspired to go back to college a second time and finish a degree in art with an emphasis in graphic design.
While at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, her first graphic design job was with the Outdoor Program. Between leading freshman orientation canoe trips and backpacking trips in the Grand Canyon, she created fliers and ads for everything from maple syrup programs to climbing trips at Palisade Head. When a ski trip to the Rockies with a handsome new student naturalist named Andrew Slade fell through, she took off with friends on a 10-day winter north-to-south ski traverse of the Quetico and Boundary Waters.
After dozens of outdoor adventures around the country, that student naturalist named Andrew eventually became her husband. In 2007, Sally created There and Back Books, publishing their first book together, Skiing the North Shore. She directs all marketing efforts for There and Back Books, including email newsletters, website updating, and their Best North Shore blog content.
Sally divides her time now between publishing and designing for her clients. For over 20 years, she has provided graphic design and creative services for a wide variety of clients. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Sally worked at H.T. Klatzky and Associates, a full-service advertising agency, as an art director and eventually account manager where she wrote and designed for print, radio, and television. Sally earned her BA in Communication and BFA in Art from the University of Minnesota. She designs digitally on a Mac using the Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop), Dreamweaver, and the WordPress content management system for creating websites. She avidly pursues continuing education in the fields of design and social media marketing.
Sally has her design studio in Duluth’s downtown, where Lake Superior is a constant distraction out her 11th floor windows. You can view her online portfolio and learn about her clients at sallyiscreative.com.