Barry Lopez’s “Apologia” is one of his shorter and stranger essays.
Lopez makes it a practice to remove animals killed by cars off the road. He stops a lot. His list is appalling: deer, raccoon, rabbits, birds. He stops to removes butterflies and bees from the car’s grill.
This was a long trip, from his home in Oregon to a friend’s house in Indiana. As I said, he made a lot of stops, hence the words to his host on arriving later than he’d planned. I’d assumed the title would lead to another kind of apology.
In a way, the essay is an explanation for the way Lopez lived his life. Most philosophers I’ve read would take the idea of a private religion to be like that of a private language, a contradiction. But it seems to me that Lopez’s practice is what theory says doesn’t work.
I’ve never read a more moving account of the damage we humans are doing. And I stand convicted: I drive because I think this horrible slaughter is somehow justified.
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