ROUTES

art
MISTY TRAIL
KAREN GENZ
Karen Genz got into photography as a result of COVID-19. As a way to get out of the house, she started going for hikes and bike rides, taking photos along the way. She discovered she had a knack for it, and with the encouragement of family and friends, she pursued it as a regular hobby, taking part in local art fairs and displays at the Pump House in La Crosse, WI and various La Crosse businesses.
Wildflowers and Cloud Shadows

Joshua Cunningham
Joshua Cunningham has been painting the landscape for over 20 years. He lives in St. Paul, with his wife Shannon, their children, Greta, William, and a sheepdog. He is a member of the Outdoor Painters of Minnesota, Oil Painters of America, and a Signature member of the American Impressionist Society. His paintings of the upper Midwest have won regional, national, and international awards. Joshua’s work is represented at Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis, MN; Olson-Larsen Galleries in West Des Moines, IA; Bell Street Galleries in Bayfield and Madeline Island, WI; Patrician Galleries in Wilmette, IL.
Oil Painting is the way I seek to understand what interests me, stirs my faith, and awakens memories. I paint how I see because I feel representational painting offers a human expression of the world around us in a language we all hold in common. As an artist, my primary goal is do right by my subjects. If I have done right by them, the paintings have a chance to stir you as the scene has stirred me. The Driftless Area is a relic of an older world, as it was before the glaciers ground down and reshaped the landscape. It is a Midwestern time capsule. It is driftless, in every sense of the definition. In geological terms, it is devoid of soil and stone, pushed along by the glaciers. And in a poetical since, as I wander the area, my mind is set adrift along the rhythms of the land. These paintings are not unlike the fossils I find along creek beds. They are a record.
Cut Bank

Andy Evansen
Andy Evansen’s career in art started as a medical illustrator in Minneapolis, creating artwork for medical device companies, textbooks and surgeons. When that industry became dependent on digital art in the early 1990s, he longed for a return to fine art and began watercolor painting. His work gained recognition after winning an international watercolor competition for American Artist Magazine, appearing on their cover. Soon he began getting requests to teach, and he now travels and paints around the world.
His paintings have won numerous awards, including the Bronze Medal of Honor at the 2025 American Watercolor Society Exhibition, and he has now achieved Dolphin Fellow status in the American Watercolor Society, their highest honor. He is also a signature member of the National Watercolor Society, San Diego Watercolor Society, Transparent Watercolor Society, and the California Art Club, and was recently invited to join the Pure Watercolour Society in England as their international member.
His love of painting on location led to him being a featured presenter at the 2014 and 2016 Plein Air Conventions and inclusion in the 2017 Qingdao International Masters Watercolor Plein Air Event.
September in Rose Valley

Hannah Heyer
A self-taught artist, Hannah C. Heyer draws a lot of inspiration from her local area in rural southeastern Minnesota, especially the farm on which she lives: “As familiar as the back of my hand, yet never the same two days in a row.”
She enjoys the challenge of plein air painting; the way it encourages her to take a closer look, to more fully take in and appreciate what might otherwise go unnoticed. Her work is a study and celebration of place, time and season; an attempt to capture a fleeting and changing view.
Kickapoo Sandhill Crane

Mike Lind
Mike Lind is an artist and graphic designer living in the hills near Soldiers Grove with his wife, Dani, and their two border collies. He runs Aspen Farm Studios, helping small businesses, farmers, and nonprofits with their print and web design needs.
Prose
The Farm

Joyce Sutphen
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. Her first book of poetry, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women’s Poets Prize Press,1995). Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and her third book, Naming the Stars (Holy Cow! Press, 2004), won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her recent books are Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), This Long Winter (Carnegie Mellon Press 2021), and That Other Life (2023). She served as the Minnesota Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2021, succeeding Robert Bly, and she is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
A Park Where You Can Walk Among 1,500-Year-Old Bears and Birds

Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams is a conservationist writer and activist who splits her time between Utah and Wyoming. She is the author of more than 15 books, most recently The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.
Trout Fishing and Morel picking from the Last River Rat

J. Scott Bestul & Kenny Salwey
Trained as a high school English teacher and coach, Scott Bestul left that lucrative field to pursue another- as a full time freelance writer in 1990. He lived in southern Minnesota with his wife Shari. He is the father of twins, Brooke and Bailey. He died in April 2025 after a long battle with cancer.
THOSE WHO THOUGHT THEY COULD BUY A FARM

Catherine Young
Catherine Young is a disabled writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the environmental memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored by Coal and the eco-poetry collection Geosmin (Midwest Book Award). Her work appears internationally and nationally in literary journals and anthologies. Catherine worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before devoting her life to writing. Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. She deeply believes in the use of story as tool for transforming the world.