This is a book review for Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez.
To lie on your back somewhere on the light-drowned tundra of an Ellesmere Island valley is to feel that the ice ages might have ended but a few days ago. Without the holler of contemporary life, that constant disturbance, it is possible to feel the slope of time, how very far from Mesopotamia we have come. We move at such a fast clip now.
Barry Lopez, “Arctic Dreams“
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez is the story of a wilderness in a constant state of hope. The climate is so harsh, the land is so barren, life so difficult that whenever life thrives, it signifies a dream realized.
As I’ve grown older, I notice more of the magic of life. I look out my window now and see a cardinal fly by. Its red body against the blue sky is stark. The bird lands on a magnolia tree. No blooms this time of year, but when in bloom, the flowers are beautifully white against the green and brown leaves.
It’s easy to witness a bird land and fly off again. To truly behold nature, though, one must learn to watch. “It not only takes a long time of watching the animal before you can say what it is doing,” Lopez writes, “it takes a long time to learn how to watch.” Relatedly, Henry David Thoreau says we need to sit still long enough for the inhabitants to “exhibit themselves to you by turns.”
Lopez writes about individual animals testing their surroundings. He writes about how curious polar bears are, and about animals trying things never done by any members of their species. They are “revealing their capacity for the new,” he says, which is the ability to adapt. In watching animals try new things, he witnessed the “mysteries of evolution” at work.
Most of us don’t sit outside long enough to truly appreciate all that the natural world offers. Consequently, most of us don’t slow down long enough to notice our life or contemplate where it’s is headed.
Like animals, we can increase our own capacity for the new. Unlike animals, we can ponder our surroundings and occurrences in life. When we ponder and try new things, we adapt and evolve. We grow. But it takes time and solitude and a keen eye.
Rob Walker writes that “there are details and orders and relationships that take time to perceive.” We connect those things only when we give attention to them. Walker calls this the “practice of conscious noticing.” Time is vital here. We aren’t going to notice things unless we take the time to notice things.
You may think that a bird landing on a branch is nothing special. But that bird inspired this essay. There is a promise in small moments, as Robert Maurer puts it. It takes curiosity, an open mind, and paying attention to see realize what those promises are. Of course, not all small moments will mean something, but we’ll never know if we don’t stop regularly and think about their place in our lives.
Barry Lopez went to the Arctic and noticed. He saw life and death, a past and a future. He saw change, large and small. His observations about humanity, about nature, about life itself are powerful reminders that life is so much more than what’s presented to us. To identify what life truly means, we must notice what’s happening to us and around us.
Arctic Dreams is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. It captures the essence of a land both devoid of life and bursting with it. But you have to see life to gain anything from life. Then, meaningful experiences come from pondering what you’ve noticed.
The meaning Lopez takes from his experiences in the Arctic can be summed up in this passage:
Sitting high on a sea cliff in sunny, blustery weather in late June—the familiar sense of expansiveness, of deep exhilaration such weather brings over one, combined with the opportunity to watch animals, is summed up in a single Eskimo word: quviannikumut, ‘to feel deeply happy.’
The essence of what Lopez describes is calmness. Leo Tolstoy writes, “When there are some calm periods, we should appreciate them and make them last longer. This is the time when useful thoughts appear; they become stronger and guide us in life.”
The “practice of conscious noticing” is calmness. It’s stepping apart from the bustle to enjoy simpler aspects of life, to see things just a little differently than others do.
Notice life or we’ll lose sight of where we’re headed.
