A Field Guide to Other People's Trees - Hardcover

Kelley, Margot Anne

9781938086304: A Field Guide to Other People's Trees

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1938086309 ISBN 13: 9781938086304

Publisher: George F Thompson Publishing, 2015

Old houses may not be haunted, but they retain many palpable vestiges of their pasts. And when Margot Anne Kelley and her husband, Rob, moved into an old farmhouse, they inherited that past as well as the property. On their one acre on Maine's mid-coast, they learned much about the history of their home not by visiting the local historical society but by spending time observing the trees, plants, and grasses that had been planted by those who once owned their land. What they discovered is a landscape history that harkens deep into New England's past.

In this field guide to other people's trees, we learn about some of those past owners and their trees. Guided by Kelley's evocative text and gorgeous photographs, we come to appreciate the same lessons that she did—that plants carry the past into the present, that we are part of a rich and interconnected world. In sharing her property with us, Kelley gives us a glimpse of her unique part of New England, encouraging us by her own example to imagine the many gifts we, too, inherit with a house and plot of land.

Intimate and informative, Kelley's field guide is a joy to read and a gift to all who share her love of nature and of place. Like the plants that define her land in Maine, this book invites readers to recognize that we can be fully grounded in our home place.

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About the Author:

Margot Anne Kelley was born in 1963 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and grew up in Clinton, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in English at the College of the Holy Cross, her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and American literature at Indiana University, and her M.F.A. in media and performing arts at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Prior to receiving her M.F.A., she spent a decade as a faculty member in the Department of English at Ursinus College. She spent much of the next decade teaching photography and art theory at the Art Institute of Boston, before becoming the Interim Director of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in 2011. Currently, she is the executive director of the K2 Family Foundation, Chairman of the Board of ORION magazine, and an adviser or board member for a number of other nonprofits focused on finding creative approaches to living more sustainably. She is the editor of Gloria Naylor's Early Novels (Florida, 1999) and the author of Local Treasures: Geocaching across America (Center for American Places, 2006) and a chapbook of poems, The Thing about the Wind (Fiddlehead Press, 2012). Her writings have appeared in Antipodas, African American Review, Interfaces, The Maine Review, Modern Drama, and many anthologies, including Ethnicity and the American Short Story (Routledge, 1997) and Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern (Missouri, 1994). Her photographs and other artworks have appeared in exhibitions and galleries throughout the United States, among them the Berman Museum of Art, Copley Society of Art, Photographic Resource Center, Center for Creative Photography, AXIOM Gallery, and Sam Lee Gallery. Her photographs are also included in corporate and private collections and in the permanent collections of the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art and Berman Museum of Art. She resides with her husband, Rob, in Port Clyde, Maine.

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