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bobbo49's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Lopez is one of the best observers and writers of the natural world and human interactions with/in it, and the essays here are brilliant snapshots of his adventures. The later essays also contain sobering and sad observations about his pedophile father and horror-filled stricken childhood, which are very hard to read but give context to his struggles and his success beyond childhood.
Moderate: Child abuse and Pedophilia
grantelope's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Child abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault
mepresley's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This final collection of Barry Lopez’s essays displays his passion, intelligence, curiosity, and empathy. He brings the natural world vividly to life and holds his deep concern alongside an abiding faith in the way that place survives in some fundamental way regardless of the way humans change the landscape. He recognizes and communicates clearly and poignantly how humans are connected to place, the ability we have to commune with our home if only we will be present and observe, listen to what is has to say and feel the way that heals us.
His love of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, where he spent much of his childhood, and his home in the Cascade Range in Oregon shine through brightly. He takes us alongside him to track and tag wolves with Bob Stephenson, to take snow samples in Antarctica and go the doors of the research facility in the South Pole, to the Weddell Sea on a research vessel, to travel with Native Americans through the woods, to an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, through the dangers of the Drake Passage and the Lamaire Channel, to rural Alaska during walrus-hunting season, to the Majave Desert, on a dive under sea ice in McMurdo Sound, to the northern part of the Galapagos archipelago where he helps rescue sea lions caught in an illegal net, to the deep woods and river beside his house where he watched the salmon spawn every year for 50 years.
He also provides us with a vulnerable and heartbreaking story of his childhood sexual abuse and the way that nature served as his escape, as his promise that there was more to life than the trauma being inflicted on him, and through his journey to finding peace. He opens up to us about his evolving relationship with faith, and about the ways he has learned to adapt and appreciate life differently as he ages and his body is capable of less.
He talks about the role of art in making meaning and bringing about change, about what there is to learn from non-Western perspectives, ones that value stability over progress, that understand land not as something to exploit, own, and profit off of, but as something which is an integral part of us, while also remaining untamed despite our illusions of control.
In the essay “In Memoriam of Wallace Stegner,” Barry tells us, “What I want to know, what I look for in a writer, is what goodness a person is capable of, how did love flourish around him or her? how did what they do help?” (29). He goes on to say , “If love is to discover and rediscover life, to encourage and protect it, to marvel at it and serve it…..It is the best we can do for each other, to remember, to say it all again” (30). In the afterward to the book, his wife gives a touching tribute to Barry that concludes, “My husband often said that his profoundest desire was to live a life that helped. Barry, from those of us who loved you, your life helped” (322). I didn’t know Barry, but love —of place, of animals, of people in all of their brokenness—shines through every page and it is impossible to read this collection without feeling in your bones how much a voice like Barry’s helped everyone it reached.
His love of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, where he spent much of his childhood, and his home in the Cascade Range in Oregon shine through brightly. He takes us alongside him to track and tag wolves with Bob Stephenson, to take snow samples in Antarctica and go the doors of the research facility in the South Pole, to the Weddell Sea on a research vessel, to travel with Native Americans through the woods, to an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, through the dangers of the Drake Passage and the Lamaire Channel, to rural Alaska during walrus-hunting season, to the Majave Desert, on a dive under sea ice in McMurdo Sound, to the northern part of the Galapagos archipelago where he helps rescue sea lions caught in an illegal net, to the deep woods and river beside his house where he watched the salmon spawn every year for 50 years.
He also provides us with a vulnerable and heartbreaking story
He talks about the role of art in making meaning and bringing about change, about what there is to learn from non-Western perspectives, ones that value stability over progress, that understand land not as something to exploit, own, and profit off of, but as something which is an integral part of us, while also remaining untamed despite our illusions of control.
In the essay “In Memoriam of Wallace Stegner,” Barry tells us, “What I want to know, what I look for in a writer, is what goodness a person is capable of, how did love flourish around him or her? how did what they do help?” (29). He goes on to say , “If love is to discover and rediscover life, to encourage and protect it, to marvel at it and serve it…..It is the best we can do for each other, to remember, to say it all again” (30). In the afterward to the book, his wife gives a touching tribute to Barry that concludes, “My husband often said that his profoundest desire was to live a life that helped. Barry, from those of us who loved you, your life helped” (322). I didn’t know Barry, but love —of place, of animals, of people in all of their brokenness—shines through every page and it is impossible to read this collection without feeling in your bones how much a voice like Barry’s helped everyone it reached.
Graphic: Child abuse and Sexual assault
avisreadsandreads's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
Graphic: Child abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Genocide, Murder, and Colonisation
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