Barry Lopez: How Writers Draw On ‘The Genius of Community’
“Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”
“The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memories. This is how people care for themselves. ”
This will be short, but I just wanted to write some thoughts about the environmental writer and thinker Barry Lopez, who passed away Friday in Eugene, Oregon at the age of 75. His book Arctic Dreams was an important source of inspiration for me in understanding human relationships with the more-than-human world.
Lopez had been living in Eugene since his river house in McKenzie, Oregon was destroyed by the wildfires, one of many fires that consumed forests across the Western United States this year (my own family’s home in Oregon was almost destroyed by wildfire this summer. But luckily, the fire stopped about a half-mile from…
