Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez (review)

Reviews 81 For as this astutely assembled anthology on the subject shows, achieving the simple life is no simple matter. As we page through the Puritans’Sumptu­ ary Laws forbidding lace and other “immodest fashions,” visit a hippie com­ mune of the 1960s, or survey the retrenchment of modern-day farmer Wendell Berry, we confront a bewildering array of approaches to the age-old problem, as brave proponents of this or that escape from the maws of civilization wrestle with the gummy issues of economics, politics, sociology, and religion. For that, by book’s end we should feel downright chipper over the neat solution of the chicken farm or woodsy cabin. We’ll also thank Shi for the deft introductions placing his selections in historical context. And as students of the West we’ll be reminded once again that the nation often has borne its hope westward. PETER WILD University of Arizona Arctic Dreams. By Barry Lopez. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986. 464 pages, $22.95.) One hesitates to summarize this book quickly—its range of suggestion is great. The idea in the title is that dreams, projected hopes and desires that is, shape our perception and behavior. Not a new theme, perhaps, but here case histories from the North, together with the author’s experiences, together with his comprehension of our environmental moment in time, freshly illuminate our species and its “act.” The stage is the wild, which implies the cosmos. Arctic Dreams well represents the philosophically important lines in the American nature essay;it shows that in writing about natural history, one may with subtlety touch on great human issues, every bit as appropriately as a novelist or poet. But the book is not abstract about these great issues. Its virtue, indeed, is its sharp focus. When Lopez describes a horned lark on it nest, out on the absolute openness of the tundra but just a yard or so from his feet, we are allowed to see the bird itself. We feel the peculiar strength of the late evening light of the northern summer. We see what is there, and then to experience reverence for this tiny spark of life, to sense that the light itself (so new to one from the temperate zone) and the space have somehow helped to shape one’s compassion, seems not to be a projection. Regard is the natural outcome of seeing clearly. A similar moment occurred to Henry David Thoreau; in his case it was a nighthawk on its eggs that inspired thoughts about vulnerability and tenacity, and aroused the immense power of fellow feeling. It is clear that the moment of connection, the pure image that expands suddenly into a whole, fair, and heartful world, is at the core of the nature essay. It is there in William Bartram’s travel account in the South, rising into exclamations to the Creator; 82 Western American Literature in John Muir, of course, to whom the glacier-carved shapes of the mountains were proof of eternal rightness; in John Hay, whose studies of terns (Spirit of Survival) are alive with images of their flashing flight. Lopez adds to this tradition with vivid observations of birds, polar bears, musk oxen, marine mammals, ice, weather, light, and landscape. What makes his observations tell is a strong sense of the experienced environment, the feel of things, the physical necessities that set perspective. He is alive to the Arctic. He is also aware of its vulnerability to the dreams of a worldwide culture that is emphatically not alive to the Arctic. To most, probably, the Arctic (if thought about at all) is a place where certain natural resources (whales, once; now oil) may be procured, but at a cost and with a bit of heroic drama. Edward Abbey has called Alaska the “last pork chop,” with reference to the mechanical devouring, spreading over the planet, that characterizes our time. Lopez too knows the score; has seen the rigs, pipelines, and airstrips, and talked with the people on the ground who ask only, “What else is it good for?” But he tries to avoid righteousness. The final feeling he has, overshadowing all else, is appreciation for...