Barry Lopez (1945–2020)

In his luminous Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez travels wild country over a span of years, picking up observations, taking up with native peoples, and talking to scientists, industrialists, and others banking on finding something they seek in these polar places. He is active and curious and not shy of gestures of deeply felt appreciation: “I took to bowing on these evening walks. I would bow slightly with my hands in my pockets, toward the birds and the evidence of life in their nests.” He show more muses, “In a simple bow from the waist…you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream.”

What is staked here are arctic dreams, and for Northern peoples the dreams are being interrupted. Rising temperatures are thinning and melting Arctic ice. Lopez’s book, published in 1986, is not one focused on these changes but I’m struck by how much the risks they bring to wildlife and to “Eskimo” culture call to mind the nightmarish “savssats” he describes: “Late in fall, while narwhals are still feeding deep in a coastal fiord, a band of ice may form in calm water across the fiord’s mouth. The ice sheet may then expand toward the head of the fiord…” The expanding ice sheet grows to exceed the distance a narwhal can travel under ice while sustained by a single breath, so the narwhals are trapped. They cannot get out. There is frenzy.

That is a threat from ice. But as the Arctic warms, leads (picture liquid “savssats,” i.e. channels of water) form and widen ever more readily, marooning polar bears on smaller, more widely separated islands of ice. Attempts to escape floes by crossing the expanding leads become especially deadly to cubs and imperil local hunters too. As Lopez observes about pack ice, “to venture out there on foot is, to put it simply, to court death.”

The rewards of Arctic Dreams are many. The account of explorers’ efforts in the region is not to be missed and by itself would justify the volume, and it is just one part (What were these men seeking? What had they imagined they’d find? What desires were inflamed or satisfied by their journeys?). Barry Lopez has given us a beautiful and inspiring and profound and worrying piece of work. show less

Writing a decent book isn't that difficult - there are multitudes of good writers with a facility for language who can come up with something readable merely by applying their talents to a given subject for a few months. It's a matter of mechanics more than anything else: give an established writer a topic and a deadline and you can be assured that most of the time the resulting product whether fiction or non-fiction will slide smoothly down the gullets of the reading public. To write a show more truly excellent book, however, you have to be truly passionate about your subject. This fire in the heart and in the fingers can't be mistaken; it's a vividness of imagery, a sharpness of perception, an outpouring of insight, and a rhythm of prose that makes reading the result both a pleasure and an education, which Arctic Dreams certainly is.

Arctic Dreams a nature book, and the finest books about nature are great examples of the unity between edification and entertainment that a driven author can achieve: to pick only American authors, John McPhee has made an entire career out of mining the lyrical side of the English language from the alpine majesties of the natural world, Jack London's lupine solitudes will always be peerless in their intensity and force, Rachel Carson almost singlehandedly revived the idea of the environment as a political issue worth caring about, and Henry David Thoreau is still worth rereading to understand the conflicted mindset of the modern lover of nature. Lopez borrows from each of those traditions in this work whose subtitle ("Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape") gives a good indication of his take on the Arctic. It talks about animals, birds, fish, whales, water, ice, the stars, the sun, Eskimos, explorers, painters, all refracted prismatically by the effect that this daunting edge of the Earth has on people like him who have lived in it for years.

It's obvious he had something of a religious experience out there in the Arctic - his lengthy digressions on the history of the narwhal or the migration of muskoxen flow in torrents that rejoin the main narrative after epic journeys of history and data, while his ruminations on the difficulty European painters had in replicating the peculiar clarity of light they saw in that alien landscape are just one of the ways he tries to get across the idea that this place can't be described in words, even if they have the fit and precision of ice blocks in an igloo. His discussions of paintings are key, and I highly recommend looking up the artwork he references while you read, because a lot of the book is devoted to the mindset you get in when surrounded by towering icebergs and endless plains. Having those depictions, as inadequate as they are, increases your appreciation for the daunting contrast he describes between the implacable earth and the ambition of man.

It's hard to read the book and come away not full of superlatives and flowery metaphors, which is a testament to the power of Lopez's prose. I haven't stopped reading so often to admire an apt phrase since I first read McPhee's Encounters With the Archdruid, and while Lopez is much more politically engaged in his subject than the scrupulously neutral McPhee, I feel like it only enhances the intensity of his ardor for the land and puts him more in Carson's realm.

I ultimately found that I had only two minor issues with the book, both related. The first issue concerns a brief discussion of the differences between Eskimo and outsider languages as they relate to the Arctic wilderness. Invoking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Lopez offers the claim that due to the grammatical construction of the Hopi language, it would be easier for a Hopi child to understand quantum mechanics than an English-speaking child. Suffice it to say, this is the worst kind of layman pseudo-science (I must have missed the overwhelming dominance of Hopi speakers in theoretical physics), and it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the book. At least he didn't repeat the infamous "50 words for snow" canard.

The other issue is the general over-romanticism of the Eskimos and their way of life. While I've never been to the Arctic and have gotten all my knowledge of Eskimo culture from books, passage after passage veered dangerously close to noble savage clichés that told me more about Lopez's disdain for his own culture than anything about Eskimos. Couldn't you write that 14th century English peasants were "exquisitely adapted to the rhythms of their environment" with equal veracity, or rhapsodize about their "differing conceptions of time and space" in the same way? The commendable sympathy and insight Lopez had for the Eskimo way of life and the challenges it faces from modern society did not need the encrustations of idolatry he chose to provide. However, the book is still excellent, and is highly recommended if you like great writing about cool nature topics. show less

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

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