Horizons

"From the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men, an epic, revelatory work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters--human, animal, and natural--that have shaped an extraordinary life. Taking us nearly from pole to pole--and across decades of lived experience--Barry Lopez gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves through six regions of the world: from western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Gala pagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica. Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the Paleoeskimos who trekked across northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered central Africa, an Enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into Japan during the time of the shoguns, and today's ecotourists in the tropics. Throughout his journeys--to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on Earth--and via friendships he forges along the way with scientists, archaeologists, artists, and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world. Vivid, lyrical, and capacious, voicing concern and frustration along with humanity and hope, Horizon is a crowning achievement by one of America's most necessary voices."--Dust jacket.