EUGENE, Pray. (AP) – Barry Lopez, an award-winning writer who tried to strengthen ties between people and the place by describing the landscapes he saw in 50 years of travel, died. He was 75 years old.
Lopez died in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday, after a years-long struggle with prostate cancer, his family said.
Longtime friend Kim Stafford, a former Oregon poet, said that Lopez’s books “are milestones that define a region, a time, a cause. It also exemplifies a life of devotion to the craft and learning, to be humble in the face of wisdom of all kinds. “
Author of almost 20 books on natural history studies, along with collections of essays and short stories, Lopez received the National Book Award in 1986 for “Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape”. It was the result of almost five years traveling through the Arctic.
His final work was “Horizon”, an autobiography that recalls a lifetime of travel in more than 70 countries.
Born in 1945 in Port Chester, New York, Lopez grew up in the San Fernando Valley in California and, after his mother remarried, in New York. In “Horizon”, he wrote that in those formative years, he developed “a desire simply to leave. To find out what the horizon has isolated. “
His last years were spent with his wife, Debra Gwartney, in a wooded area along the McKenzie River, east of Eugene. After years of writing about the natural world and the effect of humans on climate change, he lamented the loss of acres of wood, not to mention personal papers, in the September 2020 fire at Holiday Farm.
The fire damaged Lopez’s home so much that he was unable to live there. The fire also destroyed a building that kept his original manuscripts, personal letters, photos and a typewriter that he used to write his books. The IBM Selectric III was quickly replaced by an identical model by his friends.
“Just an incredible body of work and memories,” said his stepdaughter Stephanie Woodruff. “Very meticulously maintained and organized. That (loss) was devastating, certainly. He wrote all the books on a typewriter. “
In 2013, Lopez wrote the essay “Sliver of Sky”, revealing that he was sexually abused by a family friend for several years, starting when he was 7 years old. Lopez said the rehearsal was an attempt at catharsis.
Woodruff said the essay possibly helped lead to “Horizon”, a book that has been in the works for more than two decades. In a 2019 review, the Associated Press said the book looked like the culmination of Lopez’s illustrious career, describing it as part of the travel diary, part history, part science lecture, part autobiography and completely unique.
“I really think (the rehearsal) released something in it to really firm, round and complete ‘Horizon’,” said Woodruff. “Everything he wrote was personal, of course.”
In a statement on Saturday, his family encouraged financial support for the McKenzie River Trust, with which Lopez had worked on conservation efforts.
Lopez leaves his wife, four stepdaughters and an older brother. A younger brother died in 2017.