Barry Lopez: 'Replacing Memory'

 Barry Lopez, a great observer of nature, trained his eye by observing the streets of the Murray Hill section of Manhattan.

He wrote about returning to his mother’s apartment when she was dying and spending time at a window where he had spent a lot of time as a boy. The scenes through the window had a natural progression, to borrow a phrase used by biologists. Lopez had watched girls in school uniforms going and coming. He had watched young men on grocery cart bikes, three-wheelers, and listened to the empty bottles clattering in their cases.

I watched as though I’d never see such things again — screaming arguments, the unworldly navigations of the deranged, and the haughty stride of single men dressed meticulously in evening clothes.

It’s that watching that interests me — how some people turn out to be observers of life, wherever it’s lived, while others are oblivious.

The story about the view from the winder is in an essay called “Replacing Memory.” And to be fair, Lopez was an observer wherever he lived, wherever he went. He spent part of his childhood in Southern California when some of it was rural. 

 The “replacing” in the title does not suggest that we should substitute memories. The essay is more about placing our memories in their proper places. Sometimes visiting a place again, maybe especially a childhood home, can help a person do that.

But, to the extent we have a shared history, we also have collective memories, some of which we do try to replace. Lopez visited the site of the Bear River Massacre of Shoshone people in 1863 in Idaho. Many Americans would substitute that bit of the nation’s memory for something out of Hollywood.

• Source: Barry Lopez, About This Life; New York: Vintage Books, 1998, p. 193. “Replacing Memory” is on pp. 191-210.