Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Ravens and River Notes

by Barry Lopez

Here, for the first time in one volume, are two of Lopez's masterpieces, RIVER NOTES and DESERT NOTES. From the thundering power of the river's swift current, to the stillness of clear freshwater pools; to desert springs, birds and wild, and rattlesnakes

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Essays, Natural History, Science, Environment, Short Stories

Paperback

First published September 1, 1979

About the author

Barry Holstun Lopez is an American author, essayist, and fiction writer whose work is known for its environmental and social concerns.

Lopez has been described as "the nation's premier nature writer" by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his non-fiction, he frequently examines the relationship between human culture and physical landscape, while in his fiction he addresses issues of intimacy, ethics and identity.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this little book written when Lopez was very young (his first, I think), talks to and lifts my spirit like none other.

When I first read Desert Notes and especially this excerpt (below), I was surprised by my tears. And I don't cry easily.

A quote from Desert Notes: "This is how to do it. Wait for everything to get undressed and go to sleep. Forget to explain to yourself why you are here. Listen attentively. This is the sound of the loudest dreaming, the dreams of boulders. Continue to listen until the music isn't there. What you thought about boulders will evaporate and what you know will become clear. Each night it will be harder. Listen until you can hear the dreams of the dust that settles on your head."

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times I wasn’t sure what I was reading about as some of the writing didn’t seem to make much sense to me. This is imaginative writing describing the sensations evoked by the desert and the river but I was disoriented between the observation of nature and obsessive and passionate intensity of imagining being in/part of the places and creatures Lopez describes.

I was never sure who the narrator was, at times an unnamed ‘I’ and then a similarly unnamed ‘he’. At times I was thinking of abandoning the book and then a passage appealed to me and I read on. I preferred the stories in River Notes, of being by the river, observing the salmon for example returning to spawn, and the more straight-forward approach in Hanner’s Story, in which a river guide talks about the history of a community named Sheffield and the stories about the idyllic and far-fetched stories about these people. But overall I didn’t enjoy this book, and although I liked some of the descriptive writing, I was more baffled than enlightened

[Hanna Walton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I arrived at Barry Lopez via his nonfiction work which I love for his adventures and the incredible ways he thinks through them. I was surprised to learn that this book was fiction, but Barry Lopez's incredible person is still so evident.

[skye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read one essay from this book in "The Sierra Club Trailside Reader" while on the Appalachian Trail - and loved it.

I found this book in a little bookstore on Orcas Island in WA. Read the whole thing and loved it back then. Read it again on the Grand Canyon and after, and loved it just as much or more. Read some out loud to our whole crew as our 3 boats were tied together, drifting downstream on a moonlit night, final miles after 17 magical days.

Basically an amazing prose poem, is how I think about it.

[Maximus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desert Notes: 5
River Notes: 2
Desert Notes was really good, but River Notes kinda fell off. It had some strong pieces but it was tedious to read. Very 70s.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know that Berry Lopez wrote fiction and so I was excited for these short story collections. I’m definitely going to want to reread this while camping. As beautifully written as his nonfiction.

[Misia Zilinsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read many books about the desert and many books about rivers and loved them all deeply but this book…..the way he strives for poetic prose seems pretentious, the connections to the landscape superficial and awkward when he desperately wants them to be deep. As someone who enjoys this type of writing and loves other books of Barry Lopez, this book is disjointed and difficult to get attached to. I found it hard to finish despite it only being 150 pages and on my favorite subject to read about. There were some lovely moments which kept me reading, but as a whole, not what I was looking for.

[Janna Newman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the overabundance of metaphorical language to be rather annoying, which may be more to do with the delivery by the audiobook narrator or perhaps because I've been digesting far more non-fiction lately. I listened to it in west Texas, too, so the setting should've been ideal.

[Riko Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but a little to flowery for my tastes.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a great book. I read the "Raven" story about 10 times. So. Good.

[Ray Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical Realism. I always liked his nonfiction, but now I have a deeper appreciation for his fiction.

[Kasey Lawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

“I know you are tired. I am tired too. Will you walk along the edge of the desert with me? I would like to show you what lies before us.
All my life I have wanted to trick blood from a rock. I have dreamed about raising the devil and cutting him in half. I have thought too about never being afraid of anything at all. This is where you come to do those things.
I know what they tell you about the desert but you mustn’t believe them. This is no deathbed. Dig down, the earth is moist. Boulders have turned to dust here, the dust feels like graphite. You can hear a man breathe at a distance of twenty yards. You can see out there to the edge where the desert stops and the mountains begin. You think it is perhaps ten miles. It is more than a hundred. Just before the sun sets all the colors will change. Green will turn to blue, red to gold.
I’ve been told there is very little time left, that we must get all these things about time and place straight. If we don’t, we will only have passed on and have changed nothing. That is why we are here I think, to change things. It is why I came to the desert.”

[Samuel Gasc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Succinctly said, this collection of stories by Barry Lopez reacquainted me with the poignant power of prose after quite the hiatus from that category of the written word. My reading over the past decade has been more non-fiction, from science to theology to mysticism to self-help to philosophy and more. But for whatever odd reason I never found my way back to fictional narrative literature. And, boy, did I forget just how eloquently complex ideas and concepts can be communicated through story. There is something integrally human about storytelling, and Barry Lopez lends a very human voice to this time-honored tradition. Whether it be through the stories shared from the dry desert plains or by the shore of a flowing river, these anthologies shine and sparkle with all of the magic and all of the wonder of their majestic environments. I can easily see this being a book that I return to over the years and pull something new with every reading. Thanks again for the recommendation, John! ❤️

[Cody]

I know of no other writer that so deftly--but also jarringly--blends the scientific with the eloquent and abstract. Somehow Barry Lopez always maintains crisp, calculated observation amidst dizzying allegory and fiction.

In these "notes"--vignettes, really--Lopez lets loose sketches and fables that continually assert that "It is impossible to speak with certainty about very much." It's exhausting, this journey into unknowing, but also exhilarating to realize our endpoint isn't a destination, but, rather, a beginning: "When you are suddenly overwhelmed with a compassion that staggers you...you will know a loss of guile and that the journey has begun."

[Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh a young Lopez, rages like a river with his observations and reflections, ornamenting nature with a dazzling display for his power of blending nonfiction and fiction so you can’t tell, so you relish, so you forget, and then delightfully reminded that if you pay attention to the world, to your thoughts, and to his words - they can take you anywhere. Reading this reminds me of a young Leonard, bursting through the pages of his novella Beautiful Losers, damned be the consequences of where it goes and it goes beautifully. Written in small 10-20 min stories, I think I’ll be revisiting these tracks to his album often. Fucking delicious read.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crushing to be in the middle of this and hear news of Barry Lopez's passing on 12/25/20. Such weight to each of these stories--I could never read more than one at a time, no matter that each is only a few pages--and that weight became only more palpable and present. Those two words capture how Lopez relates to the world and builds his stories: with incredible presence, through which the other-than-human world becomes more clearly palpable to his readers. Much gratitude for this author and his words in the final weeks of 2020.

[John Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don’t really read this book, you absorb it. It’s a set of messages from a timeless past.

Many of the essays? Poems? Are grounded in long stretches of observation, not to move a narrative forward but to soak in a moment. Many of the images don’t make logical sense, but do ring true. I spent some time looking for quotes to extract but they die when they’re pulled out of the pages, limp and pathetic facsimiles of life. So I guess I’ll just have to come back to it again later, and take another look.

[Mark Schultz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven / River Notes: The Dance of Herons, by Barry Lopez 1990. I read this sometime in the past year. I was not inspired by it, and in the end, I’m not sure what Barry Lopez was aiming for. I made a few notes, which now I can’t find, and I re-sold the book to a used book store, so – this will have to do it.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lopez is a master storyteller. His desert notes are mystical and metaphorical, a desert without a name. River Notes opens with The Search for the Heron, a truly magnificent essay. The river is the McKenzie in Oregon, where Lopez lived most of his life. The stories about the Log Jam are people stories; the rest are all about the river and what the river shares with us.

[Jake · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two books for the price of one...and I'll never get that time back.

I wanted to like this collection but I really couldn't get into it. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind to read allegorical fiction. I understand this was one of his earlier works. Probably isn't a good place to start if you're reading him for the first time.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has genuinely interesting moments, and it is a celebration of sustained attention and presence in nature, but alas, I thought it was too affected and overwrought. Also, the adjective "alkaline" to describe the desert and dust is overused.

[Wylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed the Desert Notes portion. The imagery of the desert and its mysterious-ness is captured so well by Lopez. I did have a little trouble with how disjointed some of it was but that is just the style.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes a special mindset to soak in the thoughts of Barry Lopez, for each essay takes on thoughts of its own. Prose poems, if you will. This read was specifically on River Notes and a few of the essays were felt throughout. It's a winter afternoon type of read.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hold in my heart an absolute sorrow for birds, a sorrow so deep that at the first light of day when I shiver like reeds clattering in a fall wind I do not know whether it is from the cold or from this sorrow, whether I am even capable of feeling such kindness.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book imprinted upon me a fierce love and respect for the desert, and a surprising amount of knowledge of the flora & fauna which inhabits it. Going to Utah/NM several years after reading this book I was able to identify birds, trees, and shrubs.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good. Staggering at times. Liked Desert Notes a bit more. Definitely planning to read Arctic Dreams now.

[Naomi Ayala · Rating 5 out of 5]

What stunning, stunning prose. A poet's eye. Will be a book I read again in the future.

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out the discussion in the Nature Literature group.

[Matt Harms]

Really enjoyed Desert Notes. Struggled to get through River Notes.

[TessTalarico · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read a lot off great reads by Barry Lopez, but for some reason these essays were hard to get into and enjoy. Now I must reread River Notes and Crossing Open Ground.