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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
I have always felt drawn northward. There's just something about the north — be it the relative isolation, the cold, the light/darkness — that has always lent it a sense of mystery in my mind.
The title "Arctic Dreams" encapsulates this attraction perfectly. There is something dreamlike about this fascination with the north, and everything set in it (Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy comes to mind).
Even today, if I find out that a particular story is set in some northern location — Svalbard, say — I'm much more likely to pick it up.
But "Arctic Dreams" might have been a little bit too grounded in reality for my liking. Now don't get me wrong, this book has everything a naturalist might want, but it truly is designed with naturalists in mind. There are looooong digressions here about Arctic birds, Arctic sea life, Arctic tundra, Arctic peoples, Arctic air, Arctic light, Arctic darkness, Arctic ... you get the idea.
That's all well and good, it's just long and, I must admit, incredibly tedious. I listened to this on audiobook, which likely only exacerbated the tedium. Barry Lopez would be going on about narwhals when I suddenly realized I'd been thinking about something else for the last ten minutes, but it's ok, because Barry is still talking about narwhals.
Would I have enjoyed this more if I had actually read it? Maybe. But I am sure I would have still found it tedious.
This essentially reads as a nature journal, and it's about as interesting as that. Yes, there are some lovely turns of phrase and some cool facts about the native peoples that inhabit whatever ice-covered terrain Barry is sauntering across that particularly month, but I'm not sure I really wanted this much info on Arctic terns, though they do sound lovely.
I'm sorry, Barry.
It's not you, it's me.
I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into here. Maybe I'll come back to the print version of this at some point in the — let's be honest — very distant future, but for now, this sort of meditative exercise disguised as a book just didn't really do it for me.
The title "Arctic Dreams" encapsulates this attraction perfectly. There is something dreamlike about this fascination with the north, and everything set in it (Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy comes to mind).
Even today, if I find out that a particular story is set in some northern location — Svalbard, say — I'm much more likely to pick it up.
But "Arctic Dreams" might have been a little bit too grounded in reality for my liking. Now don't get me wrong, this book has everything a naturalist might want, but it truly is designed with naturalists in mind. There are looooong digressions here about Arctic birds, Arctic sea life, Arctic tundra, Arctic peoples, Arctic air, Arctic light, Arctic darkness, Arctic ... you get the idea.
That's all well and good, it's just long and, I must admit, incredibly tedious. I listened to this on audiobook, which likely only exacerbated the tedium. Barry Lopez would be going on about narwhals when I suddenly realized I'd been thinking about something else for the last ten minutes, but it's ok, because Barry is still talking about narwhals.
Would I have enjoyed this more if I had actually read it? Maybe. But I am sure I would have still found it tedious.
This essentially reads as a nature journal, and it's about as interesting as that. Yes, there are some lovely turns of phrase and some cool facts about the native peoples that inhabit whatever ice-covered terrain Barry is sauntering across that particularly month, but I'm not sure I really wanted this much info on Arctic terns, though they do sound lovely.
I'm sorry, Barry.
It's not you, it's me.
I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into here. Maybe I'll come back to the print version of this at some point in the — let's be honest — very distant future, but for now, this sort of meditative exercise disguised as a book just didn't really do it for me.
Arctic Dreams was originally published in 1986 and won the US National Book Award for non-fiction. It is a compilation of around 10 essays, which can be read separately, each one focusing on a different subject, as Lopez focuses on the inhabitants, visitors and four-legged, two-winged migrants of a frozen territory in the North.
Reading his work is a little like being mesmerised by a compelling narrator in a nature documentary, for it is not just the images of the animals and the landscape that are interesting, but his recounting philosophical thoughts of our interaction with nature and local populations, whether they are polar bears, seals or Arctic peoples.
I don't think I have ever highlighted so many passages in one book, as I have in Lopez's Arctic Dreams, it is a privilege to walk in his footsteps, to figuratively look over his shoulder and see inside a compassionate mind as he whispers words onto the page of this incredible collection of observations of natural life.
I recognise that change that can come over us, when we spend long enough in an environment completely foreign to our norm, long enough that our behaviour starts to change, something primal occurs and so it is no surprise to me when Lopez mentions that on his evening walks, he starts bowing to the birds he encounters. This ritual will inspire his own questions into how humanity imagines the landscapes they are in and how in turn the land shapes the imaginations of the people who dwell within it. And so he journeys into the unknown to find out.
And so I find myself immersed in chapters that expound on characteristics and behaviour of musk-oxen, polar bears, the narwhal, the influence and importance of ice and light, the great migrations and more.
Barry Lopez has a unique voice, on the page and in person. Even you never read his words in a book, listen to him here speaking for less than two minutes about the gift of story in our lives.
Meet Barry Lopez
My full review here at Word by Word.
Reading his work is a little like being mesmerised by a compelling narrator in a nature documentary, for it is not just the images of the animals and the landscape that are interesting, but his recounting philosophical thoughts of our interaction with nature and local populations, whether they are polar bears, seals or Arctic peoples.
I don't think I have ever highlighted so many passages in one book, as I have in Lopez's Arctic Dreams, it is a privilege to walk in his footsteps, to figuratively look over his shoulder and see inside a compassionate mind as he whispers words onto the page of this incredible collection of observations of natural life.
I recognise that change that can come over us, when we spend long enough in an environment completely foreign to our norm, long enough that our behaviour starts to change, something primal occurs and so it is no surprise to me when Lopez mentions that on his evening walks, he starts bowing to the birds he encounters. This ritual will inspire his own questions into how humanity imagines the landscapes they are in and how in turn the land shapes the imaginations of the people who dwell within it. And so he journeys into the unknown to find out.
"I took to bowing on these evening walks. I would bow slightly with my hands in my pockets, towards the birds and the evidence of life in their nests – because of their fecundity, unexpected in this remote region, and because of the serene arctic light that came down over the land like breath, like breathing."
And so I find myself immersed in chapters that expound on characteristics and behaviour of musk-oxen, polar bears, the narwhal, the influence and importance of ice and light, the great migrations and more.
Barry Lopez has a unique voice, on the page and in person. Even you never read his words in a book, listen to him here speaking for less than two minutes about the gift of story in our lives.
Meet Barry Lopez
My full review here at Word by Word.
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
slow-paced
The title says it all...the Arctic as it was in the early 1980s presented in a way that literally feels like you are in a dream while reading it. Lopez passed away almost exactly a month ago as I am writing this. I'd like to think his heaven is like the Arctic he so poetically invokes. If so, it would be a wild, surprising place that is full of austere beauty, life, and grace.
My biggest surprise from the book is how fascinating muskoxen are. In the hands of a great writer, anything can be captivating. Lopez brings us three gifts: his beautiful prose, an appreciation of the science, history, and geography of the arctic region, and most importantly to my mind, an acquaintance with Lopez and his inner workings. I found him to be a thoughtful, intelligent man with a sense of integrity that seems so sorely missing from our culture today.
My biggest surprise from the book is how fascinating muskoxen are. In the hands of a great writer, anything can be captivating. Lopez brings us three gifts: his beautiful prose, an appreciation of the science, history, and geography of the arctic region, and most importantly to my mind, an acquaintance with Lopez and his inner workings. I found him to be a thoughtful, intelligent man with a sense of integrity that seems so sorely missing from our culture today.
Was very large but not enough investment at the time will come back to
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
I learned this week (3rd week January 2021) that Barry Lopez, the American scientist and nature writer, died on Christmas Day 2020 at the age of 75. His magnum opus, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire is a Northern Landscape, is a classic work of nature writing, and won several awards the year it was published (1986), including the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. Arctic Dreams drew on his experiences over five years working as a biologist in the Canadian Arctic, but as one literary critic (Michiko Kakutani, in the New York Times)
said, it “is a book about the Arctic North in the way that Moby Dick is a novel about whales.”
In his own words, Lopez described Arctic Dreams as a narrative with three themes:
The influence of the arctic landscape on the human imagination. How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it. And, confronted by an unknown landscape, what happens to our sense of wealth.
What does it mean to grow rich? Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a ‘fortune,’ which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north?
Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one’s homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond’s Bay wealth was? Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe?
The book covers a large range of topics in its 400-odd pages. The early chapters focus on the wildlife (narwhals and right whales, muskoxen and polar bears, snow geese, …) described in carefully observed and finely written detail. The middle chapters talk about the impacts of the landscape on vision, imagination, and the arts. Physics and geography get their turns, too, with explanations of the season-long days and nights; aurora borealis, mirages, and sundogs; stages in the development of pack ice. The final chapters turn to the history of Western (European, American, and Canadian) exploration and exploitation. The native peoples, their adaptations to the harsh environment, and their relationships to the other inhabitants and the newcomers are woven throughout. Woven throughout, also, is Lopez’s own relationship with the arctic and what it meant to him.
I read Arctic Dreams soon after it was published, 35 years ago, and it burned in my imagination for a long time afterwards. Revisiting it now, with global warming bringing irrevocable changes as the polar regions warm faster than the rest of the globe, it reads like an elegy. I’m sure there have been many books and essays published since then that update the science or cover individual topics in more depth, but I doubt there has been anything that ties them all together so nicely, or that surpasses its descriptions of human relationships with the natural world.
The prose is dense and beautifully written, the kind that benefits from a slow, reflective read to let your imagination roam and to ponder the questions Lopez raises.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Important book, this book has changed my entire reading habits and gotten me deeply interested in immersive travel writing. Lopez is able to fully inhabit a place unlike many other authors