Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren

Such unexpected content, I found the "Field Notes" would have benefitted from a real introduction-- not a segment of the volume with the label "introduction". I approached Field Notes as something to be consulted, checked, a legal document; I started reading it that way and was distracted by my expectations of fact, only to find out that its a series of short stories. Fiction. All my other reads of Lopez were not fiction--biography with lots of latitude, but not hallucinations. I shall read it all again, with more charity toward his imagination. One of the stories has stood the test of 20 intervening years. Fifty pages in, there is an imagined conversation between the male head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and a significant show more woman, head of an environmental defense organization, who takes him to task for not having the courage to stand up to those whose way of making money is to extract resources from the earth without paying for it. She wants action; he finds excuses, calls himself practical, while she's characterized as a prostitute for living on someone else's income. He leans on the polls too much, and she disputes the polling information. With changes in characters' names, it could be 2016. show less

Although a big fan of his nonfiction, this is the first fictional work I have read by Barry Lopez--it definitely won't be the last. A beautiful collection.

The first 50 or so pages are fantastic and the rest isn't bad, either.

plus 1 star for the note on type