EUGENE, Ore (AP) – Barry Lopez, an award-winning writer who tried to strengthen the bonds between people and the place by describing the landscapes he saw in 50 years of travel, has died. He was 75 years old.
Lopez died Friday in Eugene, Oregon, after years of fighting prostate cancer, his family said.
Her lifelong friend Kim Stafford, an Oregon poet, said 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 being humble in the face of wisdom of all kinds.
Author of nearly 20 natural history textbooks, along with collections of essays and short stories, Lopez was awarded the National Book Award in 1986 for “Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape”. It was the result of nearly five years traveling the Arctic.
His latest work was “Horizon,” an autobiography that recalls lifelong travels to more than 70 countries.
Born in 1945 in Port Chester, New York, Lopez grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California, and after his mother remarried, in New York City. In “Horizon”, he wrote that in those formative years he developed “the desire to simply leave. To find what the horizon has cordoned off.”
He spent his last years with his wife, Debra Gwartney, in a wooded area along the McKenzie River east of Eugene. After years 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 documents, in the September 2020 holiday farm fire .
The gunpowder damaged López’s house so badly that he could not live there. The fire also destroyed a building containing his original manuscripts, personal letters, photos and a typewriter he used to write his books. His friends quickly replaced the IBM Selectric III with an identical model.
“Just amazing work and memories,” said her stepdaughter Stephanie Woodruff. “Very meticulously maintained and organized. This (loss) was devastating, certainly. He wrote all the books on a typewriter. ”
In 2013, Lopez wrote the essay “Esqueixada de cel,” revealing that he had been sexually abused by a family friend for several years from the age of seven. Lopez said the rehearsal was an attempt at catharsis.
Woodruff said the essay possibly helped lead to “Horizon,” a book that spanned more than two decades. In a 2019 review, The Associated Press said the book felt like the most important achievement of Lopez’s illustrious career, describing it as part of a travel diary, part of history, part of lectures scientific, part of autobiography and completely unique.
“I think (the essay) posted something in it in order to substantiate it and complete‘ Horizon, ’” Woodruff said. “Everything he wrote was personal, of course.”
In a statement Saturday, his family encouraged financial support for the McKenzie River Trust, with which Lopez had worked in conservation efforts.
López is survived by his wife, four stepchildren and an older brother. A younger brother died in 2017.