Apologia

by Barry Lopez

Apologia is a story that will touch a nerve in all of us. It gives our vague sense of apprehension about brutality in the modern world a focus and, because the narrator actually does something on behalf of animals killed on the road, it gives us reason to believe that we can retrieve our dignity and a sense of purpose from the indifferent circumstances of everyday life.It has long been a habit of writer Barry Lopez to remove dead animals from the road. At the conclusion of a journey from Oregon to Indiana in 1989, he wrote Apologia to explore the moral and emotional upheaval he experienced dealing with the dead every day. On the highway he encountered dozens of animals -- raccoons, jackrabbits, porcupines, red foxes, sparrows, spotted skunks, owls, deer, gulls, badgers, field mice, garter snakes, barn swallows, pronghorn antelope, squirrels -- all victims of vehicular destruction. Stopping for each body he saw, he gently removed each one from the road.

"Darkness rises in the valleys of Idaho, " Lopez writes. "East of Grand View, south of the Snake River, nighthawks swoop the roads for gnats, silent on the wing as owls. On a descending curve I see two of them lying soft as clouds in the road. I turn around and come back."

Lopez's eloquent prose is accompanied by Robin Eschner's dramatic black-and-white woodcuts. By turns violent, raw, and tender, they provide a stunning counterpoint to a reverent testimony.

Genres: Poetry, Animals, Nonfiction, Nature

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

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

[Carl Safina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hauntingly beautiful language. Brief, but exactly as long as it needs to be. The language holds the reader in the cognitive dissonance of Lopez's bringing so much beauty of thought and word into something so unbeautiful, and that is why the book haunts.

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me, the most powerful books are ones which eloquently reveal the cultural, metaphysical, or social importance of "ordinary" things. Here, Barry Lopez has done just that. Taking the topic of roadkill, he and illustrator Robin Eschner enable us to see the great beauty of animals as well as the horrific violence we do to them.

While online biographies and interviews show no indication that Lopez is an American Indian author, I wonder if he benefitted from encounters with traditional people prior to writing this book, as the topic, his actions, and his perspective are so unusual for mainstream Americans. Apologia recounts Lopez's experience of driving crosscountry in the late 1980s. Along the road, he encounters badgers, deer, rabbits, and many other animals struck and left for dead. He makes it a personal mission to remove their bodies from the road and pray over them before continuing his journey. For him, this is "an act of respect, a technique of awareness" which attempts to do pennance for the animals and reflect on our relationship with them (pg. 3). Also, he and others who come up-close with killed animals have an unique opportunity to learn from them. In Idaho, Lopez encounters a farmer who asks to show a dead whipporwill to his wife, for they have never seen "the smooth arc" of its belly or its "small, whiskered bill" (pg. 6).

As someone who lives in a rural area and encounters a lot of roadkill, I feel that Lopez captures very well the mentality of thoughtful people who are unsettled by such deaths. For example, both he and I have wondered what each animal's life was like and what errand brought it to the road (pg. 1). Also, he aptly articulates how drivers rationalize their actions -- that hitting an animal is "horrifying, unavoidable, justified" (pg. 12). Lopez and Eschner have done a masterful job of describing the gruesomeness of the animals' deaths without sensationalist prose or imagery that might divert the reader from thoughtful reflection. For instance, he finds a deer whose skull is fractured, jaw broken, pelvis crushed, leg unsocketed, ribs dislocated. After cataloging these and other injuries, Lopez draws us back to the cause -- a speeding semi, or "80,000 pounds at 65 mph." With a black and white woodcut that includes a narrow road, tire tracks, deer tracks, and bare ribs, Eschner also brings us toward a recognition of what happened. More than a mere accident, it is a collision of two very different worlds (pg. 14). Throughout the book, author and illustrator consistently reinforce human responsibility for both the animals' deaths and for restorative action.

Although Apologia appears to be a picture book, I don't feel that is appropriate for young children. However, I think it is a must-read for anyone who drives, or anyone who wishes to reflect on humans' relationship with the natural world. I had never read Barry Lopez' work before this, but after reading Apologia I am eager to delve into his writing.

[Maineguide · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing little book. Will never think of road killed animals the same way again. What a supreme act of grace to simply pull over and move the dead from the hot top to a patch of grass, a bit of shade, the edge of a stream. And love his answer to why he does it: “You never know. The ones you give some semblance of burial, to whom you offer an apology, may have been like seers in a parallel culture. It is an act of respect. A technique of awareness.”

[stellajames · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very important prose poem about honoring road kill, see it, feeling it, how the author moves the non-human dead from road/sides, acknowledges their lives and the unfair(?)ness of their deaths at the hands of humans, and their one more way to kill, even accidentally. I highly recommend it.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but impactful book. The care he shows for our non-human relatives killed along the road is deeply touching.

[Lisa Braddock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!