Barry Lopez, who is the first person to hold the position of Texas Tech    University Visiting Distinguished   Scholar, often describes himself as a  “writer who travels.”  Born in New York in 1945, he moved with his parents and infant brother to rural California when he was still quite young.  There, though his parents divorced and he was raised in a single parent household, he spent his boyhood surrounded by the plants, birds, animals, and people of the San Fernando Valley farming communities, an existence that afforded an agreeable mixture of tranquility, security, and adventure.  His mother frequently took her young sons on trips to the western deserts, beaches, and mountains, all within driving range of the family home.  Later, when his mother remarried, Mr. Lopez found himself transported to a radically different environment–a penthouse apartment and Jesuit prep school in Manhattan.  Though the change was at first bewildering, the city experience, the rigorous academics, and the intellectual and cultural panorama gradually became part of the young man’s worldview.

Building upon those early travels, Barry Lopez has since visited every continent, explored both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions, bustling foreign cities, and remote deserts and archipelagos.  These locations, with their special combinations of people, cultures, attitudes, and problems, are thoughtfully and intelligently presented in Mr. Lopez’s writing.  Readers quickly find themselves captivated by his unique and compassionate vision and his ability to weave a complicated web of global life and issues into a powerful narrative.

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