A View of the Wild

Vintage Lopez

I reviewed three books for the print edition of The Hellbender Press, Volume 7, Issue 7, November/December 2005. I mailed copies to the books’ authors via their publishers and received kind replies.  The essays became the first installment of my column, “Nature’s Bookshelf.  

Lamentably, the parent company folded The Hellbender Press, print edition, in 2008, bringing a close to my column.  With Thomas Fraser’s return as Editor in 2020, the parent company initiated an electronic version with a vigorous publication schedule. Fraser has published several of my articles in the electronic version.

This is a slightly different version of one review with an afterword, including a link to an online biography and comments on selected publications. 

Vintage Lopez by Barry Lopez

"What being a naturalist has come to mean to me, sitting my mornings and evenings by the river, hearing the clack of herons through the creak of swallows over the screams of osprey under the purl of fox sparrows, so far removed from White and Darwin and Leopold and even Carson is this: Pay attention to the mystery. Apprentice to the best apprentices. Rediscover in nature your biology. Write and speak with an appreciation for all you have been gifted. Recognize that a politics with no biology, or a politics with no field biology, or a political platform in which human biological requirements form but one plank, is a vision of the gates of Hell."

This final paragraph of "The Naturalist," an essay originally published in Orion magazine, sums up the writings of Barry Lopez. It finalizes one of the many works reprinted in Vintage Lopez, a literary retrospective including chapters and excerpts from several previous books. Many of the books are collections of works previously published in periodicals. "The Naturalist" is the only one of these works not previously published in a book.

Lamentably, Vintage Lopez does not include any material from Of Wolves and Men, the nonfiction book that brought this notable author to my attention. That book popularized Barry Lopez as a writer and laid the groundwork for the quick acceptance of his later writing. He recounted what he learned, accompanying wolf researchers on expeditions in the field.

Vintage Lopez included the opening chapter from Arctic Dreams, the 1986 National Book Award winner, and other honors. He published Arctic Dreams after traveling with scientists in Alaska and Northern Canada. It summarized their field studies of the native peoples of those lands but also included comments on the natural world in the far north.

Vintage Lopez is the fifteenth book authored by Lopez. It is an excellent place to start for those just exploring his works.

Afterword

Barry Lopez died on Christmas Day, 2020, after publishing Horizon, a long nonfiction work that summed up his travels and his purpose in writing. I have a copy of Horizon but have yet to read it. It is daunting in length, but I also read knowing there will be no more works by one of my favorite authors. His website includes a biography and links to some final essays as they appeared in magazines.

More works by Barry Lopez

In his book of essays, Crossing Open Ground, he encourages readers to rediscover their sense of wonder. In one of them, he searches for a prehistoric stone image of a horse, which he calls an intaglio.

About this Life is a book of essays. My favorite is “Learning to See,” which was included in Vintage Lopez.

Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven/River Notes: The Dance of Herons includes two short fiction books previously published separately. Although I think of Lopez as a nonfiction writer, his works of fiction are excellent. He published several others.

Crow and Weasel is an illustrated story about two young men who decide to travel further north than anyone has gone before. They meet people previously unknown to their village and return with stories. It fits Joseph Campbell’s archetype called the hero’s journey.

Lopez published several articles and essays in Orion Magazine.  A search of their website will yield a list.