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CIRQUE
F E AT U R E Paul K. Haeder
A Remembrance for Barry Lopez
The Eye of the Wolf — Measuring Myself through Death If I were asked what I want to accomplish as a writer, I would say it’s to contribute to the literature of hope. —Barry Lopez, About This Life
A passing. A death. Moving on. Back to earth. A new journey. He filled the air with lyrical words and ideas grafted to our role as writers and people living inside and with our natural world. He was steadfast in his role as a naturalist of sorts, but through and through he was a word conjurer. He came to me when I was young, inside his book about wolves. I was in Arizona jumping the skeletons of saguaros with my 360cc Bultaco and learning the art of passage: working with ministers and laypersons helping Central Americans cross that political line between USA and Mexico. Barry Lopez’s written words were in my heart: The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you. —from Of Wolves and Men Luckily for me, I heard wolves in 2002 along the Clearwater in Idaho, being let free on Nez Perce land. Now, 42 years later, the tributes to his life, his writing, and how he touched soil and words come trickling in. But the Lopez I also know is the young man who went to Notre Dame and considered being a Trappist monk, while a deep scar from his youth galvanized into his very being and turned him away from much of man’s ways.
He is a writer who helped humanity understand their stories are valuable. I remember the television interview of him years ago, with Bill Moyers. Again, Lopez stressed he might be considered a nature writer but, in reality, he was writing about humanity. “Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader; each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can harm or help the community of which he or she is a part.” He was a gifted wordsmith. And like Winona LaDuke, he wanted to “recover the sacred.” The land shapes us all, and for Lopez, he spent time in that land — exploring the Arctic over a span of five years as a biologist. His own biography is compelling in that odd American way. Nascent Dreams He was born Barry Holstun Brennan in Port Chester, New York. His family moved to Reseda, California after the birth of his brother, Dennis. He was raised in a low-income single-parent family for a while, and his mother married Adrian Lopez, a businessman, in 1955. Adrian adopted Barry and his brother, and they both took his surname. He died with laurels, awards, and 20 books to his name. Years fighting prostate cancer didn’t lessen his ferocity for wanting to be a “writer of help.”