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Articles by Barry Lopez
An Evening Honoring Barry Lopez
We are thrilled to host a Literary Arts Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover event this evening honoring Barry Lopez, as part of the Broadway Books Year of Reading Barry Lopez. This event will be hosted in partnership with Literary Arts and will include John Freeman, Jane Hirshfield, and Debra Gwartney. We expect a crowd so come early if you'd like a seat! $17.00 ISBN: 9780802161475 Availability: On Our Shelves Now as of 24 Hours Ago. Call first to confirm.
Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects
When a sensational writer delivers another outstanding work, it is a gift to all of us. When he manages to do so from beyond the grave, it’s another thing entirely. Something ethereal. That’s exactly what Barry Lopez gives us with Syntax of the River. On its surface, the book is simply the transcript of a 2010 conversation between writer-professor Julia Martin and Lopez, an outdoorsman — he told Martin he wasn’t a “naturalist” — and master of multiple genres of writing.
Six Snowy Reads for Winter — Zibby Mag | The Literary Lifestyle Destinatio
Winter doesn’t truly start for me until it snows. Growing up in the Midwest, we usually got our first big snowfall in December, and every day after had the potential to be a snow day (the best days of the year). Snowfalls seem to be lighter and later than they were when I was a kid, which makes each one even more important. While I wait for a blizzard in Brooklyn, I turn to these six snowy memoirs and novels that remind me how vital it is to protect our coldest countries.
Trauma
In August 2013, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. To manage the steep learning curve I had been presented with, I carefully wrote out all the information my oncologist and primary care physician had given me, incorporated my wife’s notes and assessments, and consulted with a practitioner of Chinese medicine about diet, nutrition, and exercise. I also readied myself to be overwhelmed by depression, anger, grief, and denial. These emotions, however, never arrived.
Six Books for Bird Nerds and Nature Lovers
By The Editors November 18, 2022 Popular Stories ‘Like Finding a Unicorn’: Researchers Rediscover the Black-Naped Pheasant-Pigeon, a Bird Lost to Science for 140 Years How to Tell a Raven From a Crow Get to Know the Bee Hummingbird, the World’s Smallest Bird Perfect Gifts for the Bird and Nature Lovers in Your Life 13 Fun Facts About Owls Conversations with Birds By Priyanka Kumar (Milkweed Editions; 296 pages; $26) In 20 vignettes and essays, Priyanka Kumar lovingly narrates how encounters...
EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING WORLD
James Naughton has narrated several of the late Barry Lopez's audiobooks: He performs in a deep, calm, resonant tone. His pace, timing, and emulation of the author's voice--intimate, self-analytical, philosophical--seem to enter the mind of the famed writer and naturalist. Naughton is a master of cadence. He delivers these valedictory essays like prose poems, and they remain with the listener. Lopez was a close observer of the natural world.
Review: “Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World,” by Barry Lopez
EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING WORLD: Essays, by Barry Lopez “I would ask you,” writes Barry Lopez in one of the essays collected in “Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World,” “not to give in to the temptation to despair.” These days, it’s what you could call a Big Ask. Lopez, who before his death at 75 had traveled to more and stranger corners of the earth than most of us have bothered to imagine, certainly understood it as such.
EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING WORLD
by Barry Lopez ‧ Collected essays from the 2000s by the eminent, late natural history writer. “Witness, not achievement, is what I was after.” So writes Lopez (1945-2020), the indefatigable world traveler. He sought witness, to be sure: Many of the essays and articles gathered here, first published in such venues as Orion and Granta, center on exploring landscapes and the animals and people within them.
ARCTIC DREAMS by Barry Lopez Read by James Naughton
In a warm, inviting voice, James Naughton narrates Lopez's detailed natural history and firsthand observations of the Arctic, originally published in 1986. Lopez spent four years researching the ecosystem of this fascinating world. This audiobook provides an encompassing listening experience as he closely observe animals indigenous to the region, where night and day don't conform to assumptions and temperatures dip well below freezing.
The best books about geology that aren’t really about rocks
Who am I? For the past two decades, I have written about the intersection of people and place, particularly as viewed through the lens of geology and how it influences our lives. My nine books include Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography, Cairns: Messengers in Stone, and Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound. All of them have a goal of helping people develop a better connection with the natural world around them. I wrote...
The Best Science Books to Help You Understand the World
Let’s face it, the world can be complicated. And at a time when information is more readily available than ever, finding the right information often seems like it’s more difficult than ever before. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best science books around that can help you understand everything from plastic to forensic science and help get a handle on our wild, weird, and wonderful world. Are we living in an “infodemic?” Author and astronomer David J.
Cardinal Blase Cupich on the Signs of the Times
In reading the signs of his times, Bernardin was concerned about the futility of treating issues like abortion, capital punishment, nuclear proliferation, and the use of military force as discrete topics. He understood how these issues were divisive in themselves. But he was convinced that a comprehensive commitment to respecting life as a principle connecting these issues would benefit them all.
IdahoPTV Livestream
Skip to Main Content In uncertain times, your support keeps us going. Donate to IdahoPTV Problems playing Live TV? Livestream Help | Closed Captioning Support Your continuing support helps make IdahoPTV possible. Thank you! Idaho Reports The Gloves Are Off | May 28, 2021 A flurry of campaigning and executive orders made for another wild week in Idaho politics.
The Story He Will Never Write
“Remember this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed.” —Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel Barry Lopez devoted his life to the gift of stories.
Author Lopez Remembered; SEJ Speech Reshared
SEJ News: Author Lopez Remembered; SEJ Speech Reshared Society of Environmental Journalists' members lamented the Dec. 25 death of renowned nature writer Barry Lopez, whose writings included "Arctic Dreams," "Of Wolves and Men," and other books and magazine articles.
Barry Lopez and the Innocence of Boomer Travel Writing
For readers of younger generations, Lopez’s memoir of traversing the most storied locales on Earth is a chronicle of the ultimate luxury. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark May 30, 2019 Barry Lopez . (Photo by John Clark) Horizon starts with a luxurious but normal enough sort of travelogue: Barry Lopez is in Hawaii, at a resort with his family, thinking about his grandson and looking back over his decades of globe-trotting as an environmental writer.
Curtains of Geese
Towards the end of his best-known book, Arctic Dreams (1986), after chapters on migratory routes, ice, and musk oxen, Barry Lopez recounts the legend of Saint Brendan, the sixth-century Irish monk who sailed north with his brethren in a leathern boat. The monks see an iceberg – ‘a crystal pillar’ – and row towards it, though it takes three days to reach, finally threading a tunnel in the berg that, in the setting sun, seems ‘like the eye of God’.
The Whaleboat
This many pages into the book, I can feel it in the small of my back. A congressional report, 4 pounds, 12 ounces, dead across my thighs as a paving stone. I am reading it closely in an overstuffed chair in the 15-foot-square, second-story room in which I've worked for nearly 30 years. Aside, the bare floor of shiplapped Douglas fir is dappled with moving shadow, sunlight blinking through the limbs of a forest beyond the glass windows.
Barry Lopez: 'Nature is the oldest metaphor in our story'
BILL MOYERS: As you can imagine, I thought long and hard about who I would invite to be my last guest on the Journal. So many people have inspired my own work that I had a difficult time making that choice. But I finally decided to ask someone whose curiosity about the world, and pursuit of it, have set the gold standard for all of us whose work it is to explain those things we don't understand.
Barry Lopez: An Era of Emergencies is Upon Us and We Cannot Look Away
The following is from an introduction to American Geography, a selection of images from the permanent collection of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We’ve lived for generations in America with our promising tomorrows waiting for us just up ahead.
Our Favorite Lit Hub Stories From 2020
From essays to interviews, excerpts and reading lists, we publish around 300 features a month. And while we are proud of all the 3,000+ pieces we’ve shared in 2020, we do have our personal favorites. Below are some of the pieces we loved best on Lit Hub from this very long year.
Barry Lopez on the Life of a True Naturalist
It seems appropriate for me to reflect first on the undistinguished chair I’m sitting in as I try to put together a few words to introduce you to this biography of Richard Nelson. I bought the chair long ago in a second-hand store, in Springfield, Oregon. I’ve had to repair it occasionally, to ensure its sturdiness. Two worn-out seat cushions, one atop the other, make it easier to occupy for hours at a time. Two newel posts brace a tapered backrest of wooden spindles.
Barry Lopez on the Wolf Biologist Who Changed His Life as an Environmentalist
In the fall of 1975 I read a scientific report that made me sit up straight in my chair. It was entitled “The Eskimo Hunter’s View of Wolf Ecology and Behavior” and appeared in a peer-reviewed volume of technical papers called The Wild Canids, edited by Michael Fox. At the time I was in the middle of researching a book about wolves, so I read carefully every paper in Fox’s book.
Barry Lopez: Love in a Time of Terror
This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing. –Emily Dickinson, in a letter, 1860 Some years before things went bad, I arrived in an Aboriginal settlement called Willowra, in Australia’s Northern Territory. A small village, it’s haphazardly situated on the east bank of the Lander River, a dry watercourse.
A Response to Racism
Since the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis nearly two weeks ago, American cities have seen protests over racism and police brutality on an unprecedented scale. On this episode we speak with Fr. Bryan Massingale, author of Racial Justice and the Catholic Church and professor of theology at Fordham University in New York.
Episode 430: Ten Minutes with Karen Burnham
Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times. This time out, Gary talks with fellow Locus reviewer Karen Burnham, author of Greg Egan in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series, and occasional pieces for The Cascadia Subduction Zone.
The Coode Street Podcast - Episode 430: Ten Minutes with Karen Burnham
Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times. This time out, Gary talks with fellow Locus reviewer Karen Burnham, author of Greg Egan in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series, and occasional pieces for Ten minutes with...
Barry Lopez. Arktyczne marzenia czyli gdy słońce nie wschodzi na wschodzie
Aktualizacja: 16.01.2020, 16:36 Publikacja: 17.01.2020 Shutterstock Barry Lopez Zimą na Dalekiej Północy słońce powoli wynurza się na południowym horyzoncie, a potem znika niemal w tym samym miejscu, podobnie jak wieloryb obracający się na grzbiecie. Zasada, że „słońce wschodzi na wschodzie i zachodzi na zachodzie", na Arktyce nie działa.
The Best Climate Books of 2019
It’s been a great year for climate change activism—has 2019 also been a good year for climate books? There’s a crest of enthusiasm and awareness building, which is very exciting. Hopefully, what’s happened this year will inspire writers to experiment with new ways of engaging with climate change, that speak to the energy that things like Extinction Rebellion have managed to tap into. But it’s too soon yet to see what form those will take.
Restitution
One day in April, 1939, a man named Emerson Pickerell dropped an unopened letter in front of a stationer’s shop in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He continued on his way unaware, not sensing he was leaving the unopened letter behind. A few minutes later he was struck by a city sanitation truck, which killed him. The envelope, bearing a return address in Rock Island, Illinois, was picked up by a man who stepped out onto the sidewalk a few moments later to see what the police sirens were all about.
Barry Lopez and the Innocence of Boomer Travel Writing
For readers of younger generations, Lopez’s memoir of traversing the most storied locales on Earth is a chronicle of the ultimate luxury. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Barry Lopez . (Photo by John Clark) Horizon starts with a luxurious but normal enough sort of travelogue: Barry Lopez is in Hawaii, at a resort with his family, thinking about his grandson and looking back over his decades of globe-trotting as an environmental writer.
Barry Lopez: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Barry Lopez Sept.
In ‘Horizon,’ Barry Lopez travels the globe looking for humanity’s future
In Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands, Kenya and Oregon, the great environmental writer finds great beauty and dark possibilities. For more than 40 years, Barry Lopez has been one of our great writers on the environment and the human relationship to it. His prose is beautiful, but what makes his nonfiction books, starting with Of Wolves and Men and his National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams, so memorable is the sweeping reach of his mind.
HORIZON by Barry Lopez Read by James Naughton
There is an appropriate gravitas to James Naughton's fine performance of this ambitious audiobook. Lopez's far-reaching self-proclaimed "autobiographical reflection" crosses broad swaths of time and boldly travels the world, and Naughton provides excellent navigation throughout this expansive recording. His patient, capable voice steers the listener through shifts not only in time and place, but also in topic and style--always returning to concerns about our planet's health and future.
The Best Books on Wild Places
You have recommended five books for us about wild landscapes. What would you say are the characteristics of great landscape writing? Precision and particularity, combined with an appeal to the universal. The very best books are often those that look the most closely but think most broadly. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is only – apparently – about the Cairngorms, a single mountain group in north-east Scotland. But actually, it’s about the relationship between the human mind and place.
The Best Books on Wilderness
You have been living without electricity or running water in rural Ireland since 2016. What was the appeal of transitioning to an off-grid lifestyle—and how does the reality of living in the wild compare to the ‘simple life’ fantasy? This way of life is often called ‘the simple life’, but that’s entirely misleading. It’s actually quite complex, made up of a thousand simple things, like fetching spring water and carving spoons and trying to catch pike.
Barry Lopez Travels to the Ends of the Earth, Seeking Glimmers of Hope (Published 2019)
Nonfiction Scientists use a helicopter shuttle to reach a Greenland research site.Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times April 2, 2019 HORIZON By Barry Lopez Back in the mid-1980s, when Barry Lopez published his acclaimed best seller, “Arctic Dreams,” the perils facing the ecosystems, animals and peoples of the Far North stemmed mostly from nature — the basic hardships of existence in a rugged landscape.
Barry Lopez looks for hope beyond the 'Horizon'
Part travel journal, part history, part science lecture, part autobiography, and completely unique, “Horizon” feels like the crowning achievement of Barry Lopez’s illustrious career. Fans of his National Book Award-winning “Arctic Dreams” (1986) and subsequent books about little understood landscapes, cultures and wildlife will find much to love here. Readers who have never read Lopez might be better served reading one of his single-topic tomes first. At 512 pages, this book is dense.
'Horizon' an expansive take on world travels
BOOK REVIEW “HORIZON” By Barry Lopez (Alfred A. Knopf, $30) Grade: A Part travel journal, part history, part science lecture, part autobiography and completely unique, “Horizon” feels like the crowning achievement of Barry Lopez’s illustrious career. Fans of his National Book Award-winning “Arctic Dreams” (1986) and subsequent books about little-understood landscapes, cultures and wildlife will find much to love here.
Charles Simic and Barry Lopez, on a Roadtrip, 1972
The following interview took place at night, in the back seat of Charles Simic’s Volkswagen on Interstate 5 in Oregon. Mrs. Simic was driving and the Simics’ five year oId daughter, Nicki, was asleep in the front seat. Mr. Simic had just finished a reading in a Salem sorority house and was on his way home to Hayward, California, where he had a class to teach the next day.
Barry Lopez on the Hard Question of Humanity’s Survival
Whenever I camp for a while in a place as remote as Skraeling Island, I notice again the sensations of isolation. Logic tells you that all other humans except those in your party are far away. Most everything one associates with ordinary life—the noise of machinery like automobiles and leaf blowers, the anemic color of artificial lighting, the beckoning of electronic alarms, the sight and odor of waste, the monotony of queues, confinement in small work spaces—is far off.
HORIZON by Barry Lopez
Distinguished natural history writer and explorer Lopez (Outside, 2014, etc.) builds a winning memoir around books, voyages, and biological and anthropological observations.
The Secret History of 'The Godfather'
IN THE SPRING OF 1970, THE MOB, IN THE FORM of Joe Columbo, the boss of the crime family that bore his name, created an organization called the Italian American Anti-Defamation League. One of Columbo’s sons had been arrested on a federal extortion charge, spurring the crime boss to form the league as an action group against what he saw as unjustified labeling of Italian-Americans as gangsters.
The 7 Best Fitness Deals of the Week
Men’s Journal aims to feature only the best products and services. We update when possible, but deals expire and prices can change. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission. Questions? Reach us at shop@mensjournal.com. As the weather warms, the snow thaws, and our skin escapes from its winter clothing cocoon, now’s the time to think about how you’re going to look with your shirt off this summer.
Author Barry Lopez on the Far North and Fighting for the Environment
At age 74, Barry Lopez is still fascinated by the rain. On the December day we talked, the National Book Award–winning author had spent the morning walking the woods near his home, in Oregon’s McKenzie River Valley, where he has lived for 49 years. “It’s just exhilarating for me to be in the weather—just to feel the power of it,” he said.
The Best New Irish Whiskeys Under $50 You Should Drink Right Now
© Jay's photo/Getty Images There’s never been a better time to try a new Irish whiskey. A growing number of distilleries, tastes, and price points are entering the market in droves each year, pushing the limits on the style in the process. Below we’ve assembled a list of our favorite new bottles on the scene—sippers, cocktail essentials, and some that are both. The biggest surprise? All of the selections are under $50, and well-priced at that.
Orion Magazine | Autumn 2018
Volume 37, Number 3 For our Autumn 2018 issue, Barry Lopez carries us through animate rivers paired with a painting from Buff Elting; Megan Mayhew Bergman tracks beauty in a wounded world; Alexandra Tempus explores how indigenous communities in Wisconsin are responding to climate change; Scott Russell Sanders finds love and kinship in the face of great loss; Krista Schlyer writes about how the U.S.-Mexico border has wounded wildlife, plants, and people; Lia Purpura meditates on children...
Polar Light | Harper's Magazine
To get oriented here is difficult. The light is flat because the sky is overcast. The sun’s weak rays create only a few anemic shadows by which to judge scale and distance. Far-off objects like mountain peaks have crisp edges because the atmosphere itself is as transparent as first-water diamonds, but the mountains are not nearly as close as they seem. It’s about negative-twelve degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind is relatively calm, moving over the snow distractedly, like an animal scampering.
Barry Lopez: A Letter to the Late Brian Doyle
When the writer and editor Brian Doyle passed away in May of 2017, Barry Lopez wrote the following eulogy for his longtime friend. The last time I saw you, a few days before you left us, I embraced you where you lay, and said next to your ear, “I saw the boxscore this morning, in The Oregonian: 26 points, 15 assists, and 9 boards. Not bad for a point guard. Too bad you didn’t get a triple double.” Your eyes were closed but as I pulled back I saw your lips spread and lift into a smile.
Government by the Reckless, for the Wealthy
Moreover, this tax monstrosity is so filled with gimmicks, carve-outs, and penalties for various sectors of our economy that its impact will be far greater than the Republican tax cuts of the 1980s and early 2000s. Those voting for it gave little thought to how it will affect many sectors of American life. This is exactly what its sponsors wanted. Scrutiny was this bill's greatest foe.
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