Barry LopezRecensioni

A deep dive into the history, mythology, biology, massacre and reintroduction of the wild wolf. Thought provoking an still highly relevant. Should be on every university zoology/biology major's mandatory reading list. Barry Lopez at his best.

Auteur cité par Catherine Larrère dans l’écoféminisme p63

This book is the transcription of three days' conversation between Lopez and Julia Martin, a friend of long standing, at Lopez's home in the remote PNW woods. These are the sorts of conversations that, in another setting, might come across as pompous or pedantic. But here, it's just an older friend trying to convey some of the ideas and perceptions he has accumulated over a lifetime of work. I have highlighted many passages.

I enjoyed this very much. Lopez travels to these amazing places and makes them real for the reader by taking tiny details apart and looking at them in unique, insightful and unconventional ways. This is a man who cares about our planet and incites others to care through his thoughtful writing.

Interesting topics and observations, but the prose is too flowery, and sometimes melodramatic, for me.

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 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.½

Got about 2 hours into the 22 hour audio book and found it boring and patronizing, which was disappointing since I feel like I am interested in the things he was writing about and had high hopes.

Excellent with quibbles. Books of this variety are frequently dry. This one was not. If each chapter were cut by 20% it would have been better. But still a great read.

Extremely readable and beautifully written nonfiction covering almost every aspect of the arctic. This book contains elements of biology, zoology, botany, archeology, anthropology, ecology, ornithology, geography, oceanography, meteorology, geology, cartography, and more. It includes segments on muskoxen, polar bears, beluga and bowhead whales, narwhals, seals, walruses, migration patterns, where its people originated and how they live, hunting, ice and snow, the aurora borealis, history of its exploration, and scientific expeditions. It exudes a sense of place, and the author’s love for this land is almost palpable.

Lopez goes beyond technical explanations, offering insight on the human responses to this stark and stunning environment. He covers topics not typically found in a science-based book, such as art, culture, emotion, imagination, spirituality, philosophy, and the capacity for astonishment. He cautions that the extremes of this terrain make it exceedingly susceptible to man-induced catastrophes, and that long-term thinking is needed to ensure we do not destroy it, as it recovers from harm more slowly than a temperate ecosystem. Lopez makes a cogent argument that deep-rooted ideas about seasons, time, space, distance, and light are not applicable to the arctic, and that different ways of thinking about these concepts are needed.

I have read numerous scientific books and I am fascinated by the ability to survive in extreme conditions. This book stands out for its ability to communicate the science involved in understanding the arctic, while simultaneously clarifying the limits of scientific thinking in gaining a true sense of the region. It marries science and sentiment extremely well, though it occasionally drifts into rather esoteric realms. Recommended to those interested in the arctic, environmentalism, nature, science, or the relationship of humans to the natural world.

Memorable passage:
“But the ethereal and timeless power of the land, that union of what is beautiful with what is terrifying, is insistent. It penetrates all cultures, archaic and modern. The land gets inside us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it.”

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 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)

Review: Artic Dreams by Barry Lopez. 4* 08/18/2022

This book was very interesting and informing. Barry Lopez wrote a non-fiction educating, memorizing account of the Arctic surroundings. He writes effortlessly like it’s a great celebration of the profusion of life with many historical, cultural, philosophical excursions and the scientific matter of the environment.

I don’t think Barry Lopez left anything out when he wrote this book. He covered almost every aspect of the Artic. In this book the author wrote about the elements of biology, the study of plants, zoology, the study of human culture, archeology, ecology, and the study of birds, geography, oceanography and more. It also includes where its people originated and a lot of data on the animals as seals polar bears and whales. Included is the history of exploration, hunting and the aurora borealis. This was a magnificent book to read. Barry Lopez did a wonderful job organizing valuable information on most aspects of the region

I didn't connect with this one as much as the other works I have read by this fine author, but it was still worth the read. Barry was at his best when observing the wild critters and landscapes--the people parts just don't resonate the same.

There are some really wonderful descriptions of the arctic and Lopez's reactions the land and the fauna and the people both indigenous and interloper. Also a good deal of history.
What there aren't are images which would enhance readers' connections to the material though several non-relevant images of the author are crammed into the back.½

Sometimes you pick up a book and it’s words and wisdom are just what I longed and needed to hear. Familiar with his book of arctic exploration and wolves , I always admired his writing, his life and wisdom. Now I can add endurance, courage , and a willingness to be vulnerable at a time when his body was giving way to Cancer to the list of amazing attributes of Barry Lopez.

Saw on the shelf at Powell's and was an insta-purchase.

Barry Lopez's last words, a collection.

I have been looking for this since the first of the year, when I read Debra Gwartney, his wife, describing his last days in an issue of Granta.

His beloved cabin & writing home burnt to the ground during the Fall 2020 fires, and that same week he was told his cancer had advanced and the end was coming.

I can only imagine the essay that would have resulted from the Arctic explorer and climate activist losing his home to this new earth, but he was silenced too soon.

I can't believe this was written in the 80s. Lopez talks about the deep, reciprocal knowledge and dignity of people in right relationship with the land (or, in the case of colonialists, the absence of this knowledge and dignity) in a way that feels absolutely current.

I got ice-bound in Chapter 8, which chronicles one European expedition after another, and I had to skip a lot of the chapter, but the rest of the book is mesmerizing. Muskoxen, polar bears, narwhals, light and ice, spectacular human and animal migrations, meditations on how and why Western people project our ideas onto the land rather than partaking of it, our disquiet in our lonely separation from the rest of creation. What a beautiful book.

It is a shock to read a deep reflection on the relationship of humans and the Arctic that doesn't mention climate change... I guess that the climate crisis just wasn't yet on the radar of even as thoughtful a naturalist as Lopez.½

Interesting stories, each told in first person by a different narrator, each relating somehow to this theme of "resistance". Made me think of the little books put out by the Orion Society on what true patriotism is all about.

more like a little story than something that deserved packaging as a book; so short I stood and read it in the bookstore; didn't get anything out of it

When they first came out, I had read Barry Lopez’s award winning books Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape and Of Wolves and Men. I knew the beauty and insight of Lopez’s writing, but had not read him in decades.

Prepared by Lopez before his death, these essays include autobiographical accounts of his childhood that wrecked me. He endured years of sexual abuse by a family friend. And yet, his love of where he grew up never left him. I understand the longing for one’s first world, our natal landscape, and how it shapes us.

You can never have the childhood again though the desire for the innocence of those days overwhelms you from time to time to time. And then you learn to love what you have more than what you had. Or thought you had.

from Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez
Remarkably, he had considered entering the priesthood, inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, “leading a life of inquiry into secular and sacred mystery.” Then, he considered aeronautical engineering before turning to the arts as his major. For which I am thankful, for his writing combines a reverence and deep insight into our connection to the world and each other. His keen observation and scientific and historic and literary knowledge is married to spiritual depth and mysticism.

Lopez asks us to pay attention. “Each place it itself only, and nowhere repeated. Miss it and it’s gone,” he wrote. He traveled to eighty countries and in the essays he writes about how he went into the land to experience it wholly, becoming ‘intimate’ with the Earth. He warns that understanding should not be our goal as much as experiencing, being present. When I was young, when outdoors I would just stop and listen and watch, like an animal does. After paying attention, and being patient, he asks us to be attentive.

Lopez writes about ‘the failure to love’ evidenced all around us, the way we use and destroy the world and each other. In light of warfare and all the social and political ills of our world, in light of the degradation of the environment, Lopez queries, “is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?”

I was reminded again of the remarkable vision and gift of Barry Lopez.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Just devastating, his final work. Read after reading about his final days in Granta. Lopez takes us along on his usual treks and wanderings, re-covering some old ground. He wonders about the future, poses hard unanswered questions about warming & fascism.

To learn he lost his home and work to one of Oregon's rampaging fires in the summer of 2020 just before his death is almost too much.

We are right to worry.

This book is overwhelming. It makes the landscape of the Arctic come to life, with it's focus on the fauna and geography of the tundra.
Arctic Dreams is a kind of prayer. Written with the utmost love and respect for nature, it is Barry Lopez' worship.

Barry Lopez is a favorite of mine. This book is signed by him. His stories are weird, almost like magical realism but the weirder the story, the more real it seems, when he's writing them. He's a fantastic and sorely neglected writer.

A Native American tale. Two young men leave their homeland.

The title says it all...the Arctic as it was in the early 1980s presented in a way that literally feels like you are in a dream while reading it. Lopez passed away almost exactly a month ago as I am writing this. I'd like to think his heaven is like the Arctic he so poetically invokes. If so, it would be a wild, surprising place that is full of austere beauty, life, and grace.

My biggest surprise from the book is how fascinating muskoxen are. In the hands of a great writer, anything can be captivating. Lopez brings us three gifts: his beautiful prose, an appreciation of the science, history, and geography of the arctic region, and most importantly to my mind, an acquaintance with Lopez and his inner workings. I found him to be a thoughtful, intelligent man with a sense of integrity that seems so sorely missing from our culture today.

More scientific than I was expecting.