EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – Barry Lopez has died, an award-winning writer who tried to forge connections between people and place by describing the landscapes he saw in 50 years of travel. He was 75 years old.
Lopez died Friday in Eugene, Oregon, after years of battling prostate cancer, his family said.
Longtime friend Kim Stafford, a former Oregon poet laureate, said Lopez’s books “are landmarks that define a region, a time, a cause. He also exemplifies a life of devotion to crafts and teaching, to being humble in the face of all kinds of wisdom. “
Author of nearly 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 Nordic Landscape.” It was the result of almost five years of travel in the Arctic.
His latest work was “Horizon”, an autobiography that recalls a life of travel in over 70 countries.
Born in 1945 in Port Chester, New York, Lopez grew up in the San Fernando Valley of California and, after his mother remarried, New York City. In “Orizont”, he wrote that, in those formative years, he developed a “simple desire to leave. To find what the horizon has ended. “
He spent his last years 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 mourned the loss of acres of wood, not to mention personal papers, in the September 2020 holiday farm fire.
The fire affected Lopez’s house so badly that he could not live in it. The flame also destroyed a building that kept his original manuscripts, personal letters, photographs and a typewriter that he used to write his books. IBM Selectric III was quickly replaced by an identical model by its friends.
“Just an incredible body of work and memories,” said his stepdaughter Stephanie Woodruff. “Very meticulously preserved and organized. This (loss) was devastating, for sure. He wrote each book on a typewriter. “
In 2013, Lopez wrote the essay “Sliver of Sky,” revealing that he had been sexually abused by a family friend for several years since he was 7 years old. Lopez said the essay is an attempt at catharsis.
Woodruff said the essay contributed to Horizon, a book of more than two decades. In a 2019 review, The Associated Press said the book felt like the ultimate achievement of Lopez’s illustrious career, describing it as part of the travel diary, partly history, partly scientific lecture, partly autobiography and completely unique.
“I think the (essay) launched something into it to really strengthen and round out and complete ‘the horizon,'” Woodruff said. “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 worked on conservation efforts.
Lopez is survived by his wife, four stepdaughters and an older brother. A younger brother died in 2017.