Barry Lopez (1945–2020)

Barry Lopez began preparing these twenty-six essays, four of which were never before published, prior to his death in 2020. Published posthumously in 2022 with an introduction by Rebecca Solnit, it shows the depth and breadth of Lopez's travels, interests in nature, concern about climate change, and personal history.

The oldest essay was first published in 1996, the most recent in 2020; some of the older ones were incredibly prescient and current. Lopez has a deep appreciation for the land show more and the wisdom of Indigenous peoples. He knows his science, but he's a writer, and brings things to life and immediacy for those of us who have not had the same experiences he does. And he also addresses the personal - in one essay, discussing the man who sexually abused him and excoriating a society in which that kind of abuse is generally accepted on a certain level. It took me over a month to read, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but because I needed to read only an essay or two at a time and ponder. I also really enjoyed spotting connections: one essay was about Wallace Stegner, for example, and I loved learning that two authors I have admired overlap in some way. Whether you're a long-time fan of Lopez's work or want a sense of what his writing is like, this is a great place to go. show less

Barry Lopez is a voice crying in the wilderness.

Over the course of six non-fiction books (including 1986's National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams) and eight works of fiction, Lopez has served as a literary activist, raising his voice in a crowded room to tell those around him that something's not right, that all is not well with the world. In Arctic Dreams, pristine landscapes of blue ice and crystalline snow are threatened by economic development and global warming. In an earlier show more collection of short stories, Winter Count, a flock of herons descends on the streets of New York, a herd of white buffalo sings like heavenly guides, and desert stones form mystical constellations—the weird, wonderful beauty of nature reminds us to slow down and contemplate the uncomplicated self.

Lopez's writing is serene but powerful. You can sense something exciting and maybe a bit deadly working below the surface of the words, like the thrumming buzz you hear when standing near power lines.

In his latest collection of fiction, Resistance, that power line snaps and the live wires go everywhere, shooting off sparks with white-hot fury. Here, Lopez lets loose with a wilderness-splitting howl, the sound ricocheting from tree to tree.

In the opening story of Resistance, an art curator living in Paris receives a disturbing letter from home, sent by the "Office of Inland Security," which informs him that his activities have raised suspicions in the homeland agency and that he's to be picked up and brought in for questioning. He gets in touch with his friends by e-mail—a circle of fellow writers, scholars, and artists determined to dismantle government tyranny—only to find out they've all received the same letter. Since graduating from college together, they've been crying in their own private wildernesses—"We chip away like coolies at the omnipotent and righteous façade"—and now the paranoid, post-9/11 government has caught up with them, labeling the members as "parties of interest."

We had come to regard the work of writers and artists in our country as too compliant, as failing to expose or indict the escalating nerve of corporate institutions, the increasing connivance of government with business, or the cowardice of those reporting the news.

They decide to melt into the underground, but not before leaving a written record of testimonies—nose-thumbing good-bye notes to their busybody government agency. The remainder of this slim, trim collection is devoted to their tales of defiance and, ultimately, healing.

We meet a Buenos Aires restaurateur who learns how to overcome her bitter resentment of her philandering father; a carpenter who survives horrific childhood abuse; a wounded veteran ("a blind eunuch with a face of melted wax") who returns to Vietnam to reconcile his loss of innocence; a translator who crosses a Chinese desert by camel, turning her back on complacent materialism.

Nearly all of the stories are told by men and women wounded, physically and emotionally, by evil in the world. Angry at what they've witnessed in their lives, they retreat to jungles, deserts and mountains, hoping to escape from all the bad baggage of civilization. Here, in the wilderness, many of them find the balm that heals.

In "The Bear in the Road," the rare sight of a grizzly in the plains of northern Montana helps guide the narrator toward enlightenment: "At twenty-nine I continued to experience what I once named the Great Burden, the weird combination of oppression and challenge which grows out of knowing the incompetence of the powerful."
Two paragraphs later, he adds: "I was an angry bystander. I'd no power to intervene, and had no intention of dropping the work I was already committed to, not in order to raise someone else's awareness, promote greater indignation, or organize opposition." The bear, "a shadow in the lesser darkness with his shoulders against the sky," helps him to see beyond the boundaries of his own difficulties.

Resistance reads less like a book of short stories than it does a series of passionate essays—the kind Lopez is famous for in his works of non-fiction. Constructed and conceived as personal testimonies against corruption and tyranny, the stories get bogged down in exposition and many of them end too abruptly with calculated artifice.

Still, it's hard to ignore Lopez's voice calling us to action. It's also nearly impossible to read this book and not feel like you need to dislodge your butt from the recliner and get out there and do something: carry a sign, write your congressman, boycott Wal-Mart. Reading Lopez might just make you a better person.

Thematically, Resistance boils down to three sentences in a story called "Nilch'i" (the Navaho word for divine wind): "The world is beautiful and we are a part of it. That's all. Our work is not to improve, it is to participate."

Though it often falls short as compelling fiction, Resistance is not futile. It has a dangerous vibrancy, like a dancing live wire, which demands we pay attention. Polemically-driven, Lopez's fiction asks us not to be angry bystanders, but to resist totalitarianism at all levels, starting with the grassroots. It's a call to raise our collective voice in the wilderness, while there's still wilderness left in which to cry. show less

This Non-Fiction National Book Award Winner is not easy to categorize. It is rhapsodic writing, sometimes impressionistic and sometimes full of jaw-dropping facts: part geography (of the Arctic), part natural history, part biology (including background on muskoxen, polar bears, seals, walruses, narwhals, caribou, lemmings and numerous sea birds), part Eskimo sociology, part history of polar and Arctic exploration, and part philosophical musings on the relation of man to his environment and show more the relationship of human hunters to their prey.

I learned a great deal from this book. Clue to reading the book: have on hand several large, detailed maps of the region. Appendix I of the book contains the latitude and longitude of most of the key places mentioned. The story of the search for the Northwest Passage is greatly enhanced by being able to visualize the obstacles.

Some of the items that stood out to me:

In the search for the Northwest Passage (a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean), all the early explorers had to overwinter in the Arctic. An examination of a good map of the region shows how difficult it was to find a clear path through the area. While there are a number of large islands, there are only narrow bodies of water to get around them. Moreover, many of the apparent passages lead to dead ends or become blocked by large chunks of ice. Early attempts often ended in death and disaster.

Robert Peary, the self-proclaimed first explorer to reach the North Pole (his claims are in doubt), had other personality flaws besides an outsized ego and a tendency to alter facts to suit it. He notoriously mistreated the Inuit, convincing six individuals to come to America with him for “study.” He then deposited them in New York with the American Museum of Natural History as live “specimens” and abandoned them. The Inuit were kept in damp, humid conditions and within a few months, four died of tuberculosis, their remains dissected, and their bones put on display. A fifth managed to gain passage back to Greenland, and only the sixth, a boy of six or seven remained, orphaned and adrift in New York.

Peary was also cruel to his animals. He fed some of his sled dogs to the others in order to minimize the amount of food the expedition had to carry.

Lopez lived among the Eskimos while working on this book, and he discovered that few outsiders had much knowledge of the Eskimo language beyond the conversational, and even less understanding of their culture. He averred it was ''nonsense'' to consider our culture sophisticated and theirs naive.

A notion of community dominates the Eskimo worldview, as expressed by the Eskimo word “Isumataq.” It means one person cannot possibly hold all wisdom. Sharing information, respecting the opinions of others, pooling knowledge, and a respect for nature is the key to their survival.

Contrary to the popular misconception, lemmings don’t commit suicide. They migrate in large groups, and those at the front can get pushed over cliffs by the mobs following behind.

The wildlife in the Arctic is hardy. Polar bears are so well insulated they actually need to get rid of excess heat, which they do by eating snow.

In the Arctic, one often can’t discern if what is visible is a big distant thing or a close small thing. A Swedish explorer had all but completed a written description of two unusually symmetrical valley glaciers making up a a large island, when he discovered what he was looking at was a walrus.

The light in the Arctic is like a living thing, and was a constant source of awe for Lopez. Although the sun virtually disappears for the entire winter, the Northern Lights, a phenomenon caused by ionic reactions in the upper atmosphere, afford some illumination as well as putting on spectacular dynamic displays. When the sun reappears in spring, one is filled with gratitude and pleasure. Lopez noted that the reflection of the sun on the ice constantly shifts, creating scenes ranging from magnificent skyscapes to staggering cathedral-like structures made out of ice. In spite of the monochromatic landscape, nothing stays the same.

Lopez concludes about the Arctic that it is a country of the mind:

“It is easy to underestimate the power of a long-term association with the land, not just with a specific spot but with the span of it in memory and imagination, how it fills, for example, one’s dreams.”

The final line in Mr. Lopez's book, when he is standing alone on an island in the dark, silent Arctic, reads: "I was full of appreciation for all that I had seen." And readers are grateful that he shared it.

(JAB) show less

Barry Lopez is a nature writer, who writes passionately and beautifully about the world around him. This is a collection of his essays written between 1978 and 1986, and one which I devoured, reading til well past my bedtime.

It makes for lovely reading. This was a book that I carried around the house with me on the off chance I could grab a second here or there to read it. The man's gift for words is obvious, and his passion and advocacy for wildlife and wild environs is admirable. He makes show more a great philosophical case for preserving tracts of wild space for their sakes alone, and that it is only once they are lost that we as humans will feel what their loss really means. show less