In the “Robert Macfarlane Extended Universe”, as Richard Smyth rather mockingly referred to Nature writing in a 2020 essay for The Fence, Barry Lopez perhaps takes the role of a wise elder from a distant land. His work is referred to in ecstatic terms by fellow writers – his words and ideas “a substance coursing through your body”, according to Sierra Crane Murdoch. Macfarlane himself described Lopez as “the most important living writer about wilderness”. On Lopez’s death in 2020, laudatory obituaries described a serious, kind man, always willing to reach out to young writers. But, ...
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