Memory of Trees

A while back, the University of Minnesota Press was nice enough to send me a review copy of this:

Memory of Trees, by Gayla Marty, is a memoir of growing up in a tight-knit farming family in rural Minnesota. As a description, that doesn't sound like much, and definitely doesn't do justice to this beautiful book. It started slowly for me, but long before the 50-page rule kicked in, I was hooked and had a hard time putting it down. This isn't a "poor little me" memoir, destined for an Oprah sticker. Not that all of Marty's life was easy, but her passion for the family farm (begun by her great-grandfather) is so strongly felt that, as the book draws to a close and it appears more and more inevitable that the farm is going to be sold, her pain was palpable.

Plus, she can write. Her descriptions of life on the farm are wonderful, down to earth and very visual:

"Uncle can spot good places to look for agates, but agate hunting doesn't require going anywhere, really. The county road grader passes by every other day to turn over and rearrange the gravel on our roads, and once every year or two, a new load of gravel is spread from a dump truck -- a fresh supply of hope to find a truly perfect agate. The perfect agate would be round or oval, with rings around a glassy-looking center. Once, on a trip up north, we stopped at an agate shop where we saw agates polished to a glassy finish. But most of the agates we find are no bigger than a fingernail. Sometimes we spot them through a layer of dust and give them a good spit to reveal their stripes."

She also manages to stay out of the various cliched traps that could happen in a memoir of this kind. She loves farm life, but makes no bones about the fact that it's an enormous amount of work and risky. The people who, for generations, have farmed this land are intelligent, hard-working people, but she doesn't glorify them -- they have plenty of human faults. And as the younger generations move away from farming, breaking her heart, she still understands their reasons.

I loved this book. Marty is also deeply religious and ties Bible verses in to tell her story, but she does so without any preachiness. That may be because a difference in religious beliefs fractured the two families who farmed the land she grew up on, and she's careful not to demand readers believe what she does, just that they understand where she's coming from.

I've never been someone who wishes I'd grown up on a farm or wanted to live that life now. But after reading this book, I can see why others would, and do, and why it's sad that family farms have become such an endangered species. It makes me think of something I read somewhere (sorry, I can't put my finger on just where yet) about the Hmong in Minnesota, how the older generations are incredibly hard-working and talented farmers, but the younger generations, raised in the U.S., are turning away from farming. It's a way of life, an art, that could be lost, and what a shame if it is.

Amy Rea

Flyover Land , by Amy Rea, is about the best of Minnesota, and why you shouldn't just fly over.