Barry Lopez and the sympathizing outlook of whales.

     Out of all the examples of environmental literature I read in the text American Earth, I would have to admit that the most touching and emotional story I read so far was A Presentation of Whales by Barry Lopez. In this text, Lopez tells the story of a group of sick and dying whales washed up on the coat of Oregon, while the inhabitants of the Oregon region watch as scientists, reporters, and other groups of people going to great distances to get a glimpse of the suffering whales for their own agenda. From Lopez's point of view of this story he wrote, I suddenly felt a sense of compassion and humanity for the large mammals that I don't think I felt before.
     Before discussing the environmental story, I would like to describe the writer Barry Lopez and his reasons for writing a compelling story about sperm whales as he wrote it. In American Earth, Barry Lopez is described " in certain ways the elder of the disparate tribe of nature writers across the continent, helping new voices emerge and coordinating projects"(696). Indeed Lopez, for me, gave voice for the poor whales that were mistreated in many ways either for profit, source of energy, sport, or scientific research. That's what I gained from my reading of his story A Presentation of Whales. This tale that Lopez wrote is described as a "finely observed essay about a band of stranded sperm whales on the coast of his adopted home state makes clear how much American attitudes toward nature have changed over the last century"(696). I would have to agree with the part about American feelings about whales being different in the 21st century than in the 20th century, because some American whalers saw sperm whales as giant animals that existed for the purpose of providing oil to people who needed heat for whatever reason. Now the matter of the whales existence has fundamentally changed, with the protest by animal rights activists organizations such as PETA, that stand against killing the mammals for energy sources. I would have to agree with the protection of those kind of whales, or any whales, because they are a species who don't deserve to be extinct.
     In Lopez's writing, he gives a personal description of whales in American Earth when he writes the story saying, "There were, in fact, forty-one whales-twenty-eight females and thirteen males, at least one of them dying or already dead"(697). His writing of those whales in the story were completely touching to me. That impacted me to start seeing them as any person who was hurt on the tides of an ocean shore who needed serious medical assistance. Lopez even goes deeper in his writing by specifically writing about the whales suffering when he says, " the animals were hemorrhaging under the crushing weight of their own flesh and were beginning to suffer irreversible damage from heat exhaustion"(698). I got a sense of unbelievable pain from this description of the whales physical discomforts that I wanted them to get help so badly, and at the same time I was thankful that I didn't experience the kind of pain and frustration as they were dealing with. The writer himself expresses his appreciation for the whales in the story A Presentation of Whales. Within the text Lopez writes, " The sperm whale, for many, is the most awesome creature of the open seas. Imagine a forty-five year-old male fifty feet long, a slim, shiny black animal with a white jaw and marbled belly cutting the surface of green ocean water at twenty knots"(699). Now I'm not a complete expert on sperm whales other than what I've read from Melville's Moby Dick, but I don't think I read a better description of a whale. The capabilities mentioned by Lopez paints a picture of the sea mammal as a genuine leviathan.
     At the end of the story in American Earth, Lopez writes a sentence about the whales that touch my heart so much that I'm environmentally and personally obligated to view the whales as creatures that need to be protected, so they could swim free in the ocean as nature, not man, intended. Lopez writes, "The whale made a sound, someone had said, like the sound a big fir makes breaking off the stump just as the saw is pulled away. A thin screech"(715). I tried to stay as composed together while reading this emotional piece of the whales painful sounds. Like I mentioned before, I see the whales as human today, along with other large or not so large animals that used to be taken for granted in the past. I believe their existence is important even if we do or don't always benefit from it.