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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )