Friends, Artists and Neighbors of Elkhorn Slough

     Barry Lopez has hunted with indigenous people around the world, he's camped on top of Antarctic ice floes and dived beneath them searching for meteorites. He's tromped through deserts, forests and mountains. In short, he's the sort of man's man glorified by Hemingway or Jack London. But unlike these icons of machismo, who frequently pitted humanity against the forces of the natural world, Lopez seeks to help us find our place within the larger scheme of things.
     Lopez has written three books of non-fiction, Of Wolves and Men, Artic
Dreams (for which he received a National Book Award) and About This life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory. He has also composed eight works of fiction that range from the illustrated Lessons from the Wolverine to his most recent collection of short stories, Light Action in the Caribbean. He's generated two collections of essays, is a regular contributor to Harpers, Esquire, Outside... and the list goes on.
     Lopez's contributions extend beyond the pruned page. He's worked as a landscape photographer and has collaborated on several theater and concert productions, including a stage adaptation at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis of his fable, Crow and Weasel.
     And he's traveled with scientists for the last 30 years or so. In fact, his work is largely informed by the observations he's made while in the company of researchers. "I never took a course in biology, but I had a great respect for science as a way of knowing the world," Lopez said in a telephone interview last week. "I think the thing for me is wanting to be a trusted intermediary between the reader and events in the field. I want to be the reader's companion, not the reader's authority."
     Serving as the layperson's intermediary, Lopez recently completed a project a Texas Tech University with Pulitzer Prize winning biologist Edward O. Wilson to create an undergraduate program that marries the world of science with the world of the humanities.
     For Lopez, the offspring of this marriage has great importance for a society that is largely disconnected from the natural world. In his writing, Lopez often finds humankind mirrored in nature.
     In Of Wolves and Men, Lopez reports that looking into a wolf's eyes "takes your stare and turns it back on you.
     "People suddenly want to explain the feelings that come over them when confronted by that stare - their fear, their hatred, their respect, their curiosity."
And in the fictional "Remembering Orchards," from Light in Action in the
Caribbean, the narrator recalls an epiphaneous barrage of images that begins with the chance spotting of a broken branch in the orchard. On the next day he drives by the orchard and sees a flock of crows walking through the snow. "I thought not of death, but of Alejandro Castillo. One night I saw him twenty rows deep in the almond orchard, my eye drawn in by moonlight brilliant on his white shorts. He stood gazing at the stars. A woman lay on her side at his feet, turned away; perhaps asleep. The trees in that moment seemed not to exist, to be a field of indifferent posts. As the crows strode diagonally through the orchard rows I thought of the single broken branch hanging down, and of Alejandro's ineffable solitude, and I saw the trees like all life - incandescent, pervasive. In that moment I felt like an animal suddenly given its head."
     If that sounds almost like a shamanistic understanding of humankind's connection to nature, Lopez refuses to get caught up in mystic or religious romanticism. On the other hand, he does see humanity's disconnectedness as the source of a spiritual sickness that leaves us susceptible to capitalist predators. "A life where you're cut off from all your primary sources of energy is a world where you make yourself vulnerable to all kinds of manipulators," he says. "What we've done in our culture is deny or submerge or de-emphasize the spiritual components of life because they tend to stifle economic development. A lot of the strength of our economy comes from our exploitation - the exploitation of labor, the exploitation of the earth itself and the exploitation of people's growing insecurities about the world they live in. So many people spend their time in anxiety and depression that comes from living in a world where exploitation has such an impact on people's emotional lives. All I'm really doing is including a dimension of consideration that, until very recently, was a dimension that everyone considered before they acted."
     Lopez is visiting Monterey and Moss Landing this weekend to benefit the Friends, Artists and Neighbors of Elkhorn Slough (FANS) this weekend. FANS is currently engaged in a struggle to preserve the slough by opposing the proposed building of approximately 200 homes and the expansion of an existing golf course on the shores of the slough. Lopez points to the contest as an example of the difficulty in convincing the business community of the importance of unspoiled natural environments.
     "You see it in issues like Elkhorn Slough," Lopez says. "We have a whole set of numbers that tell us about the business economy, but we have no numbers that report back on our natural economy. But we all know that if you maintain a place like Elkhorn Slough, you feel better about life."

Barry Lopez Article
For the article Barry Lopez read at the FANS fundraisers, please click. http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/01-4om/lopez.html


	Barry Lopez Fund Raiser FANS had the incredible opportunity to have renowned nature writer, Barry Lopez help us with an exciting fundraiser. Over the course of one weekend, we organized and hosted 3 separate events around the Monterey Bay. There was a reading and lecture in Santa Cruz, a catered evening on an ocean going vessel in the Moss Landing harbor, at the mouth of the Elkhorn Slough, and another reading and lecture held in Monterey. Below is one of the many articles written in local newspapers about this wonderful experience with Mr. Lopez. Coast Weekly Article Coast Weekly Monterey County May 16 -22, 2002 A Wild Man of Science Barry Lopez views the world through the eyes of natives and scientists, and translates what he sees into powerful, plain English. By Chuck Thurman Barry Lopez has hunted with indigenous people around the world, he's camped on top of Antarctic ice floes and dived beneath them searching for meteorites. He's tromped through deserts, forests and mountains. In short, he's the sort of man's man glorified by Hemingway or Jack London. But unlike these icons of machismo, who frequently pitted humanity against the forces of the natural world, Lopez seeks to help us find our place within the larger scheme of things. Lopez has written three books of non-fiction, Of Wolves and Men, Artic Dreams (for which he received a National Book Award) and About This life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory. He has also composed eight works of fiction that range from the illustrated Lessons from the Wolverine to his most recent collection of short stories, Light Action in the Caribbean. He's generated two collections of essays, is a regular contributor to Harpers, Esquire, Outside... and the list goes on. Lopez's contributions extend beyond the pruned page. He's worked as a landscape photographer and has collaborated on several theater and concert productions, including a stage adaptation at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis of his fable, Crow and Weasel. And he's traveled with scientists for the last 30 years or so. In fact, his work is largely informed by the observations he's made while in the company of researchers. "I never took a course in biology, but I had a great respect for science as a way of knowing the world," Lopez said in a telephone interview last week. "I think the thing for me is wanting to be a trusted intermediary between the reader and events in the field. I want to be the reader's companion, not the reader's authority." Serving as the layperson's intermediary, Lopez recently completed a project a Texas Tech University with Pulitzer Prize winning biologist Edward O. Wilson to create an undergraduate program that marries the world of science with the world of the humanities. For Lopez, the offspring of this marriage has great importance for a society that is largely disconnected from the natural world. In his writing, Lopez often finds humankind mirrored in nature. In Of Wolves and Men, Lopez reports that looking into a wolf's eyes "takes your stare and turns it back on you. "People suddenly want to explain the feelings that come over them when confronted by that stare - their fear, their hatred, their respect, their curiosity." And in the fictional "Remembering Orchards," from Light in Action in the Caribbean, the narrator recalls an epiphaneous barrage of images that begins with the chance spotting of a broken branch in the orchard. On the next day he drives by the orchard and sees a flock of crows walking through the snow. "I thought not of death, but of Alejandro Castillo. One night I saw him twenty rows deep in the almond orchard, my eye drawn in by moonlight brilliant on his white shorts. He stood gazing at the stars. A woman lay on her side at his feet, turned away; perhaps asleep. The trees in that moment seemed not to exist, to be a field of indifferent posts. As the crows strode diagonally through the orchard rows I thought of the single broken branch hanging down, and of Alejandro's ineffable solitude, and I saw the trees like all life - incandescent, pervasive. In that moment I felt like an animal suddenly given its head." If that sounds almost like a shamanistic understanding of humankind's connection to nature, Lopez refuses to get caught up in mystic or religious romanticism. On the other hand, he does see humanity's disconnectedness as the source of a spiritual sickness that leaves us susceptible to capitalist predators. "A life where you're cut off from all your primary sources of energy is a world where you make yourself vulnerable to all kinds of manipulators," he says. "What we've done in our culture is deny or submerge or de-emphasize the spiritual components of life because they tend to stifle economic development. A lot of the strength of our economy comes from our exploitation - the exploitation of labor, the exploitation of the earth itself and the exploitation of people's growing insecurities about the world they live in. So many people spend their time in anxiety and depression that comes from living in a world where exploitation has such an impact on people's emotional lives. All I'm really doing is including a dimension of consideration that, until very recently, was a dimension that everyone considered before they acted." Lopez is visiting Monterey and Moss Landing this weekend to benefit the Friends, Artists and Neighbors of Elkhorn Slough (FANS) this weekend. FANS is currently engaged in a struggle to preserve the slough by opposing the proposed building of approximately 200 homes and the expansion of an existing golf course on the shores of the slough. Lopez points to the contest as an example of the difficulty in convincing the business community of the importance of unspoiled natural environments. "You see it in issues like Elkhorn Slough," Lopez says. "We have a whole set of numbers that tell us about the business economy, but we have no numbers that report back on our natural economy. But we all know that if you maintain a place like Elkhorn Slough, you feel better about life." Barry Lopez Article For the article Barry Lopez read at the FANS fundraisers, please click. http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/01-4om/lopez.html