The Practice of the Wild

Gary Snyder was part of the beat generation, but unlike his contemporaries who gravitated more towards fiction, throughout his life, he wrote poetry and essays reflecting on nature, and has worked as an activist attempting to preserve the forest for our bodies and minds. Snyder's story is unusual, because before he became an eco-activist and poet, he worked in logging, fastening cables to pre-cut logs in order to remove them from the forest. It is because of his perspective that Snyder's arguments in Practice of the Wild is so grounded. Using a combination of Zen Buddhism and his background studying ecology and anthropology he argues for the love of nature and issues a warning in terms of population growth, deforestation, and pollution, show more and states the spirit of man lies in nature. From the viewpoint of conservatives, many of his opinions may come off as hippie-dippie, but being someone who is often skeptical of radical perspectives, I have to say that his arguments come off as well-researched, from the soul, and fairly level-headed. I would recommend educators to use this book within the canon of the beat generation though it was published rather later (around 1990). It serves as a great non-fiction supplemental reading to some of the more abstract works made the beats such as Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti's poetry and Kerouac and Burroughs' stream-of-consciousness and cut-up, respectively, novels. show less

Been on an little enviro-lit kick lately - mainly because I've been thinking about plants a lot. With growing season being here in force on the East Coast, I've been trying to convert my yard into a lawnless native oasis.

Anyway, Gary Snyder doesn't have too much to say about that here in this collection of essays on various nature-related topics. He does have plenty of opinions about other stuff though - I felt that the writing in this book was weakest when is was most preachy. Snyder often wades into overtly political topics, something I'm not opposed to on principal, but Snyder doesn't really offer much of an alternative to the destructive society he criticizes. At one point, he seems to suggest that human beings would do well to show more reduce our population to 10% of what is was at the time of writing (5 billion). Snyder doesn't explain how this would be accomplished, and the blank is filled with thoughts of plague, nuclear war, and genocide. I'm sure Snyder would be against all of these, but you can't just throw out a kooky figure like that without explaining. This is par for the course for old-school environmental types who mostly lack (or ignore) the theoretical framwork to diagnose the systemic issues that cause degradation.

I liked this book best when Snyder was describing some of the beautiful landscapes he has visited, or describing the schools of thought he has learned about. show less

This book of essays is both indispensable and somehow grating . . . it is not Snyder's fault that what he has to teach comes so crossgrained into these times.
That said, read it. Snyder may be an axegrinder . . . but his axe is good and sharp by now. It's a useful tool.

We humans are part of nature. We are part of the wild. Wilderness is different, and hard to find. Snyder believes a sense of place and a feeling towards home is important.

Both a poet and a philosopher, Snyder has proved to be a find and a keeper!

Starting into poerty in the 1950's Beatnik Movement, Snyder, in the '60s, studied Zen-Buddism for several years in Japan and returned to the US to homestead in the Sierra Nevadas of California.

In short, he was always out to discover just how to be in the world,
and succeded, to the benefit of many readers here and in other countries.

More good advice. Unfortunately things have not improved since 1990. Needed more than ever. Inscribed copy, purchased used at Powell's.

Re-read July 2024 after seeing Snyder as guest of honor for the California Book Club last month.

An American ethic, building on Thoreau and Leopold with some Zen.

Really great. "An ethical life is one that is mindful, mannerly, and has style."