Nature’s Lessons on Life, Loss, Legacy, and Restorative Wonder with Margie Patlak

Join us in person at Schoodic Institute or online via Zoom on Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at 7:00pm for Nature’s Lessons on Life, Loss, Legacy, and Restorative Wonder, a special evening lecture with award-winning science writer, photographer, and Corea, Maine resident Margie Patlak.

During the lecture, Margie Patlak will share what the nature in Maine taught her about life, loss, legacy, and restorative wonder. She will also showcase some of Maine’s more wondrous scenery with her photos.

Within a short span of time, Patlak lost her mother and sole sibling. Reeling from those losses, she returned to live in Down East Maine, where she spent her childhood summers. While in mourning and writing about the wilder environment she experienced at her new home, Patlak uncovered many lessons from nature. For example, the three generations of monarch butterflies that it takes to make their way from Maine to Mexico taught her the value of what is passed on from generation to generation, and the dramatic tides taught her how fleeting time is and the need to make the most of it. Patlak will share several other vital lessons she and others have learned from nature about life, loss, legacy, and restorative wonder–lessons that helped her personally heal from her losses. Many of these were recounted in Patlak’s award-winning memoir More Than Meets the Eye: Exploring Nature and Loss on the Coast of Maine, which was published in 2021. She will illustrate the talk with her photos of stunning Maine scenery that appear in her more recent book Wild and Wondrous: Nature’s Artistry on the Coast of Maine.

Margie Patlak is a science writer, memoirist and photographer. Her memoir More Than Meets the Eye: Exploring Nature and Loss on the Coast of Maine was given the “Outstanding Book” award by the American Society for Journalists and Authors in 2022. Best-selling author Sy Montgomery called it a “beautiful and surprising book in which bereavement gives way to awe.” Her photobook Wild and Wondrous: Nature’s Artistry on the Coast of Maine, which was published in July of 2023, is “not just a book, but a stunning work of art that transports the reader to the magical shores of Maine,” award-winning nature photographer Steven Mandel noted. Patlak’s personal essays and articles have appeared in a number of newspapers, magazines, and literary journals including The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Discover magazine, Hippocampus, JuxtaProse and many others. Her photographs have appeared in solo and group exhibits in Maine and are in private collections. She has degrees in Botany and Environmental Studies and divides her time between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Corea, Maine.