Rangefinder 35
Well-known
I just heard it on the radio that Barry Lopez has died on December 25-th. His book "Arctic Dreams", for which he won the Pulitzer prize, is one of the best non-fiction books I had a privilege to read...
ironhorse
Joe DuPont
Very sad news indeed. He really explored the breadth of the earth and wrote about his experiences beautifully.
Bmoze
Established
Arctic Dreams is a great book that has stayed in my library through several moves. I found Lopez, like John MacPhee and others, a significant writer of our time on Earth.
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Here are a few images of Barry at his 70th birthday five years ago.
He was at this moment being cleansed and blessed by Rick Bartow the painter and sculptor and Wiyot elder. Not long before, Barry had been a public part of the roll-out for Rick’s retrospective exhibit and catalog, “Things You Know But Cannot Explain,” at the University of Oregon art museum. Rick touched everyone—including Barry’s brother in the background, including me—at the birthday gathering with those sacred eagle feathers.
Barry had a few years earlier inherited several daughters and grandchildren through his marriage to the writer Debra Gwartney. Though by this time he had begun treatment for cancer, he had experienced the unexpectedly joyful blessing of immersion in Debra’s family, the pleasure of playing paterfamilias and license to play grandfather. You can see this in his face lighting up at all those candles.
Our acquaintance was relatively late in our lives. Earlier Debra Gwartney had been my occasional colleague in creative writing at Oregon, then worked with my wife at the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society. Their friendship preceded Debra’s marriage to Barry, but as with so many unexpected blessings, included more of us in its ripples. Barry got to know cancer a few years after it had become a part of my wife Sandra Morgen’s daily existence, so they had their own conversations about that. Barry and Debra stood by me at her graveside service in September 2016. They mourned Rick Bartow’s passing that year, too.
Here is Debra with a favorite grandson that evening. Her first and best known book is “Live Through This” which, in its way, shows that family and happiness and blessings are neither permanent nor guaranteed.
Here are two of those daughters and their families Barry inherited. If you visit the Caring Bridge site for Barry Lopez, you’ll learn they were there with him in the last week. He had a meaningful and fulfilling death, which is itself a blessing and so perhaps can teach us how to give and to earn blessings in what is left of our lives.
There are many forms of mourning and blessing, witness and wonder, in Barry’s books. That they can touch you like a sacred feather is by design.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJR77jLAc_o/?igshid=941stnn9bvvb
He was at this moment being cleansed and blessed by Rick Bartow the painter and sculptor and Wiyot elder. Not long before, Barry had been a public part of the roll-out for Rick’s retrospective exhibit and catalog, “Things You Know But Cannot Explain,” at the University of Oregon art museum. Rick touched everyone—including Barry’s brother in the background, including me—at the birthday gathering with those sacred eagle feathers.
Barry had a few years earlier inherited several daughters and grandchildren through his marriage to the writer Debra Gwartney. Though by this time he had begun treatment for cancer, he had experienced the unexpectedly joyful blessing of immersion in Debra’s family, the pleasure of playing paterfamilias and license to play grandfather. You can see this in his face lighting up at all those candles.
Our acquaintance was relatively late in our lives. Earlier Debra Gwartney had been my occasional colleague in creative writing at Oregon, then worked with my wife at the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society. Their friendship preceded Debra’s marriage to Barry, but as with so many unexpected blessings, included more of us in its ripples. Barry got to know cancer a few years after it had become a part of my wife Sandra Morgen’s daily existence, so they had their own conversations about that. Barry and Debra stood by me at her graveside service in September 2016. They mourned Rick Bartow’s passing that year, too.
Here is Debra with a favorite grandson that evening. Her first and best known book is “Live Through This” which, in its way, shows that family and happiness and blessings are neither permanent nor guaranteed.
Here are two of those daughters and their families Barry inherited. If you visit the Caring Bridge site for Barry Lopez, you’ll learn they were there with him in the last week. He had a meaningful and fulfilling death, which is itself a blessing and so perhaps can teach us how to give and to earn blessings in what is left of our lives.
There are many forms of mourning and blessing, witness and wonder, in Barry’s books. That they can touch you like a sacred feather is by design.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJR77jLAc_o/?igshid=941stnn9bvvb
ironhorse
Joe DuPont
Robert
Thank you for sharing your beautifully presented sad, hopeful, and insightful story. Sorry for your loss.
Thank you for sharing your beautifully presented sad, hopeful, and insightful story. Sorry for your loss.
wes loder
Photographer/Historian
Barry and I were good friends when I was a graduate student at the University of Oregon in the mid-70s. He offered me early suggestions on marketing my photography, and his writing influenced my own. He loved living in a house with only a one-line address. I offered him the use of some of my wolf photographs for use in his book, "Of Wolves and Men" but none were used. Some people are gone from this earth much too soon.
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Wes, I understand that the house in Finn Rock—with which I was acquainted—was saved during the catastrophic Holiday Farm Fire but, as Barry wrote recently, a great swath of houses and habitats along the McKenzie River was incinerated. After the fire he was living in Eugene, and died there.
robert blu
quiet photographer
I did not know Barry Lopez but a search in the net and a visit to his site convivned me to look for his books, possibly if any is translated in my language. I'll ask my bookshop.
Sad to know he's gone, RIP.
Sad to know he's gone, RIP.
charjohncarter
Veteran
Robert, I didn't know him or ever heard of him, but I should have being a graduate of U of O. And I lived in Oregon until 1969 (and still visit regularly). Thanks for posting those very nice and extremely good photos of his birthday party.
ChrisPlatt
Thread Killer
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Although he kept a home up the McKenzie River for many years as an adult, he grew up in LA, and by the time his books and essays were getting published in the 1970s, he traveled so much that he was a citizen of everywhere and nowhere.