Arctic Dreams--Go Get a Sweater

Barry Lopez. Arctic Dreams. Vintage, 2001.

    The first book in this new BookoftheMonthClub is the 1986 National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction, and thus a model for nonfiction writers like me. But I think anyone interested in nature writing, a sense of place, or simply excellent, compelling prose would appreciate this particular book. I started it years ago and got distracted. It sat on my Shelf of Shame (books I started and didn't finish) until I read it for my Master of Fine Arts program (a different kind of book of the month club!). It's the kind of book that takes a while to get into, but the tenacious reader will be rewarded with an awareness of a unique environment on our planet. Narwhals live there!

Firkin. "Narwhal." 25 Sept 2016. https://openclipart.org/detail/262550/narwhal

     American writer Barry Lopez informs the reader in the book’s Prologue of three themes that guide Arctic Dreams:

• The influence of the arctic landscape on human imagination
• How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it
• What does it mean to grow rich?

After reading the book, I’d agree to the first, but the second two points got lost for me in the complex texture of the narrative. They were addressed near the end. I was riveted by his descriptions of the stars of this vulnerable arctic ecosystem, the 607 (!!) species of birds, and the muskoxen, polar bears, and narwhals. I’ll read anything Barry Lopez decides to write about narwhals and wonder with him what that single tusk is meant for and what it is like to live in a three-dimensional acoustical space. As curious as I was about the animals my interest came alive when Lopez began describing the historic and contemporary people of the arctic region: Eskimos (his word), explorers, artists, historians, and writers, and how they have survived (or not) in the brutal, unforgiving climate. Representatives from different walks of life bring us multiple perspectives on a place. The arctic has influenced my human imagination and I haven’t even been there.

     “I am not entirely comfortable on the sea ice butchering walrus like this.” That sentence appears on page 408, in the Epilogue. It’s one of the most compelling in the book at face value, but it tells us about Lopez’s journey. He never seems like a neophyte to the reader, but this sentence reveals that although he’s uneasy with the walrus butchering, he is comfortable with the eskimos (and they with him) to be present at the event. He has told us about the eskimos’ relationship with the land and how hunting is a succinct metaphor for that relationship. In order to hunt, the hunter goes out on the land and becomes part of the animal world. During the walrus butchering, Lopez has become part of the eskimo world and the animal world. Lopez does not treat this experience lightly.

     Lopez ponders the theme of ‘a sense of place’ throughout the book. He admits that he loses perspective and distance while contemplating the various kinds of Ice: icebergs, glaciers, ice islands, tabular icebergs, nilas, gray ice, pingos, and ice shelves. Imagine having to ask if that animal is a small one up close or a large one far away! Lopez read many journals about the same regions, realizing through the process that gaps in knowledge emerged eventually. Also through his careful study of the history of exploration in the region, he notes that the earlier explorers were simply trying to find a Northwest Passage and get through it. Later explorers planned to ‘overwinter’ and learn what they could about the environment. He identifies patterns in historical writings of exploration rather than merely reporting interesting factoids. Considerable thinking about thinking is going on in this book.

     Maps, Lopez says, give us a false sense of place. The making of maps is traditionally a contemplative exercise. ‘Imaginary lands’ and ‘fabled landscapes’ are depicted, and sometimes maps are used as mnemonics—here is where that person lived, here is where I saw that deceased willet. I was inspired to draw a mnemonic map of a walk I take often. It’s not easy to get things in the right place on gridded streets, so imagine the difficulty of mapping a jagged coastline.

     Lopez describes how land and place work their way into the mind of a person. The place humbles the person and he becomes part of the landscape along with the polar bears and muskoxen. He’s like the animals, depending on the landscape for survival. That’s the large sense of place, the Umwelt, or ‘our place.’ I cannot comprehend the mind-expanding experience of living in the arctic. The closest I come to that kind of dangerous beauty is watching a huge blizzard or hurricane and then dealing with the recovery. It is awesome in the literal sense as well as the vernacular. Nature is boss and will put me in darkness or light as she sees fit.

     On a smaller scale, one might find an object, a tool or a building, and wonder what ideas were attached to this artifact when it was created and used. Take this line of thought further and imagine what thought accompanies industry in the arctic region. Those not part of the landscape probably think “What else is it good for?” and “It is too vast to be hurt.” The land must produce somehow or it is a waste of real estate. We readers of Arctic Dreams know this is not true. This immense, accident-prone ecosystem supports life independent from what we know as far as we know. There’s no waste in that.

     “I lost for long moments my sense of time and purpose as a human being.” Lopez says this on page 404 as he contemplates the glacial landscape at Axel Heiberg Island. At times, this was my experience while reading this book. I lost track of time and place and achieved a clarity of the reading mind similar to the ‘flow’ in creativity. The rich tapestry of Lopez’s National-Book-Award-winning prose knocked me out. I’ve known this phenomenon before, but it is a rare treat to be so transformed and transfixed.