Snyder is still around at 94, a much awarded and esteemed poet.  The winner of a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and a Bollingen Award, he spans modern American poetry from the Beats (He read a poem at the famous City Lights poetry night at which Alan Ginsberg read “Howl” and often refers to his friend Jack Kerouac in his poems. ) to the current environmental movement.  His early life experience as a logger, a boiler room hand on ocean going ships, and a fire lookout in the Northwest and his travels to China and Japan where he spent 12 years studying Zen Buddhism, gave him a unique combination of insight into nature and the human spirit.

There were many poems in this collection which I didn’t either ‘get’ or enjoy, but the few nuggets that I unearthed made it a worthwhile endeavor.  Many of them focused on walks he took in the mountains of California.  Here’s one entitled “The Trail is Not a Trail”:  I drove down the Freeway/And turned off at an exit/And went along a highway/Til it came to a sideroad/Drove up the sideroad/Til it turned to a dirt road/Full of bumps, and stopped./Walked up a trail/But the trail got rough/And it faded away—/Out in the open,/Everywhere to go.”

I’d urge you to read Snyder and be inspired to walk the Sierras and other wilderness areas.  He’s a fitting successor to Thoreau, Muir, and other walkers, but I’d suggest you start with his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Turtle Island” rather than this collection. I read this book because it was on my shelf.  All sorts of treasures hiding in piles, shelves, and nooks in this house!