Customer Reviews

Local Treasures: Geocaching across America (Center for American Places - Center Books on American Places)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a long-time "geocacher", I have experienced many adventures in geocaching, both alone and with family and friends, all the while having fun without wondering why the sport is so appealing. This book answers that question by capturing the spirit of geocaching in a quiet, meaningful voice. The photographs are exquisite, finely textured and rich in detail. The accompanying text is multi-layered, giving a glimpse of the physical geocache while providing background into circumstances that led the author to that location. This makes for a warm, tender, deeply personal story that touches the heart.

This book would be well worth owning just as a gorgeous collection of American photos: Kelley's photographs capture the spirit of many places that most shots couldn't convey, often thanks to unusual perspectives and compositions. But Local Treasures also tells some interesting stories about the methods of geocaching--and how people use it as a both a hobby and a way to orient themselves to the places they occupy in the world. The photos and stories in this book really manage to invoke a sense of the diversity of places and people across the US, and to give the reader a brief sense of alignment with those places.
Overall, a beautiful array of photos stitched together with a great storytelling voice give a relaxing and worthwhile read.

Deft mini-essays, a few hundred words each, face off with arresting full-page photographs of the locations that inspired them. Up in one corner, the mathematical analog, exact longitude and latitude of the place you are looking at, for that was how it was discovered, via a game played with hand-held global positioning satellite (GPS)units and the internet, a game called geocaching. Margot Kelley's essays are at once intimate and cosmic, playful and poignant. Highly personal, even confessional, they are interwoven with public policy comments, next-wave scientific facts, and speculative cultural theory. Each photograph is stunning composition in its own right that also speaks its side of a complex dialogue with text. If you are a geocacher, you will feel vindicated and fulfilled. If you are curious about geocaching, you will be educated and intrigued. If you know anyone who is into geocaching, you have found THE perfect gift. But, in truth, this would be a great book without a single reference to the game. This is place-writing at its wisest, each segment adroitly paired with a visual feast, so that the effect of the whole transcends the sum of the parts. LOCAL TREASURES speaks more truth about Americans and our relationship to our environment than any book since Walden Pond.

Margot Anne Kelley reminds us of exactly why we started playing this game in the first place! It's not about the treasures you find in the boxes, it's about the treasures in the world around us. The pictures are beautiful and the stories really draw you to the locations. As an added bonus there's that great sense of camaraderie that we get through the shared experience of geocaching.

This is a great book for cachers (especially those dealing with cabin fever) and also a great way to introduce your non-geocaching friends to exactly what we see in this game.

This book is an exploration of a new-millennium game; which is to say, it's an exploration of new-millennium humans. And Margot Kelley explores her territory with grace and precision. The book fascinates whether or not the reader is a geocacher because Ms. Kelley so skillfully expresses her own fascination -- not only with geocaching but with the rapidly-changing world that engendered it. With arresting images and insightful stories, Ms. Kelley inspires and includes her readers in the gentle art of Paying Attention. The attention here is on intersections and the trajectories that create them -- the meeting place of latitude and longitude, image and experience, nature and technology, time and place, politics and play, the mundane and the mystical.

This beautiful book serves many purposes, not the least of which is to explain to those who have never experienced geocaching just what it is that drives us to do it.

"Caching", as it is known by the devotees, consists of a number of things, including exploring new places and viewing exciting areas, which is one of the things this book shows with grace in the wonderful photos, some very aesthetically pleasing, some simply representational, but all giving the reader an idea of what the cacher who placed the cache wanted to share, or perhaps what the author got from going to the cache. She shares her stories of going to many caches she has visited and the thoughts and insights she experienced while going there. It is a great narrative on the caching mindset.

The book itself is beautifully done and extremely high quality. I find myself constantly checking to see if I turned two pages accidentally due to the thickness of the paper, and the printing is excellent quality. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to explore more the world of geocaching and especially those who wish to share it with others who perhaps don't get it.

This book is hands down the best geocaching book there is on the market today. It really shares what most of us love about Geocaching and that is the journey to places we likely would never have gone. I highly recommend this book to anyone-cachers and non-cachers alike will find this book inspiring.

This book is just what you need to capture the interest of possible cachers. Nothing peeks the interest better than great photos of interesting places and having the added pleasure of finding a hidden treasure. I received this book as a gift and have thumbed through it many times.
Local Treasures: Geocaching across America is one of the things I make sure is out when company comes to visit.

This is a great introduction to the world wild outdoor gps inspired treasure hunt known as geocaching. Throughout the book the author shares thoughtful and real life experiences with visual and verbal images that together help form the essence of what things we, as seekers, often discover whilst looking for something else.

As another reviewer stated, it is makes an excellent book for the coffee table. It will hopefully inspire others to discover for themselves the joy of exploring and experiencing the world outside the constructs of what has become a very surface orientated world.

It is my sincere belief that geocaching is beyond any single volume of work, as the depth and range of it are beyond the knowing of a single author. However, Margot Kelley eloquently refines and warmly shares facets of her own discoveries which will no doubt resonate within many hearts.

Geocaching is an ever expanding experiential buffet. This book is an invitation to join in the progression of continual discovery and perhaps become an active participant in the revelation of the feast.