Barry Lopez, a Pacific Northwest nature writer who explored the connections between the human and natural worlds in novels and nonfiction, died December 25 at age 75. Originally from New York, Lopez lived many years in the woods along the McKenzie River east of Eugene, Ore., before the September 2020 Holiday Farm fire destroyed his "25 acres of mature, temperate-zone rain forest," as he wrote. He is best known for Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (1986), which chronicled five years of biology work in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, an Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Lopez was also a contributor to National Geographic, the Paris Review and Outside, as well as a contributing editor for Harper's magazine.
His final book, Horizon (2019), is an autobiography charting a lifetime of travel to more than 70 countries, in which Lopez also explores humanity's incessant desire to explore and often exploit their surroundings. Paperback versions of both Arctic Dreams ($16.95) and Horizon ($17) are available from Vintage. --Tobias Mutter
