
In this posthumously published collection of essays, the late Barry Lopez writes about paying attention to the natural world, and to indigenous cultures. He recounts events and encounters from his extensive travels, philosophises about our relationship with our planet and its other inhabitants, and describes places that hold special meaning for him. In a few of the essays, he also writes about being sexually abused as a child.
It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Lopez’s work that there are many thoughtfully observed passages in this collection. I was particularly moved by some of the later essays on the subject of rivers. Here he is, for example, describing his local river:
I could’t say that I knew the McKenzie after my first year here. I had to nearly drown in it once, trying to swim across from bank to bank one day and dangerously misjudging the strength of the river’s flow. I had to watch a black bear wade through a patch of redds, biting through the spines of adult salmon. I had to come into the habit of walking its stony bed upstream and downstream, in daylight and at midnight, bracing myself with a hiker’s pole and calculating each slippery step, the water vibrating the pole in my hand like a bowstring and breaking hard over my thighs. I had to see how the surface of the river changed during a rainstorm, with the peening rain filling in the troughs and hammering down the crests. I had to become more than just acquainted with the phenomenon. I had to study beaver falling alders into its back eddies, great blue herons stab-fishing its shallows, and lunging otters snatching its cutthroat trout. I had to understand the violet-green swallow swooping through rising hatches, and the ouzel flying blind through a waterfall. I had to watch elk swimming in the river at dusk. But still, I can’t say I know it.
Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World is a fitting tribute to a wonderful writer.
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