"Todos podemos concordar que há um problema com o egoísmo do eu humano. Será este um reflexo do meio selvagem e da natureza? Penso que não, pois a própria civilização consiste na destruição e institucionalização do ego sob a forma do Estado, tanto no Oriente como Ocidente. Não é o caos da natureza que nos ameaça, mas a presunção por parte do Estado de que foi ele que criou a ordem. Além disso, uma ignorância quase autocomplacente no que toca ao mundo natural permeia os círculos empresariais, políticos e religiosos euro-americanos. A natureza é ordenada. O que na natureza parece ser caótico é apenas um tipo de ordem mais complexa."

Thought-provoking

The best of this kind of writing leaves one adoring to become a rock by a river, sitting and locked in thought as the body slowly modified and becomes one with its surroundings. This book succeeds.

ok. i'm calling it. this book did not catch me AT ALL. and i feel guilty. everything about this book, it's author, and the topic should be grabbing my attention. but it didn't. i couldn't make myself like it. maybe it's me, maybe the author, but i can't finish this book.

Some essays I loved and some I quit/skipped. Some I agreed with and others I thought had grains that resonated while I overall disagreed. In any event, very interesting, timely, and philosophical. I will certainly be pondering and revisiting these ideas often in my thoughts.

This collection of essays is a engaging and oddly soothing combination of reminisces, travel tales, philosophy, ecology, and poetry that portrays Snyder belief and desire for humans to return to a more integrated approach to the natural world and a greater acceptance of how things really are anad our place in it. There were so many great moments within these pages that everyone would be able to find at least a few takeaway messages that can be incorporated into the lives and general views and approaches to the world. My one criticism, however, is that each essay is very much human-centric and still leaves the reader with a sense that we are separate from nature to some degree. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoying reading about the various different practices and tales that have incorporated people and nature around the world and how to be more in tune with the natural world. But as an ecologist, I believe there is a desperate need for people to value nature for who and what it is, not for what it can provide us, we need to remove ourselves as the focus with nature surrounding us and instead view it all as a collective. Yes we have managed to create a 'civilised' veneer that we believe separates us but it is a falsehood, which Snyder does touch upon just not enough for me. Still, these essays are beautifully written and are just as relevant now than when they were first written in the 1990s, maybe even more so.

For a book written 30 years ago from a US PNW point of view, it has aged remarkably well and is applicable to practicaly any region of the world. Same of my favoruite quotes from the book:

*Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged

*Nationalism... the grinning ghost of the lost community

*It is not nature-as-chaos which threatens us, but the State's presumption that it has created order. Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.

*Our conservationistenvironmentalist-moral outrage is often (in its frustration) aimed at the logger or the rancher, when the real power is in the hands of people who make unimaginably larger sums of money, people impeccably groomed, excellently educated at the best universities-- male and female alike--eating fine foods and reading classy literature, while orchestrating the investment and legislation that ruin the world.

*Just as you could not grow culture out of a population of kindergarten children, a forest cannot realize its own natural potential without the seed-reservoirs, root-fungus threads, birdcalls, and magical deposits of tiny feces that are the gift from the old to the young.

*There is no death that is not somebody's food, no life that is not somebody's death. Some would take this as a sign that the universe is fundamentally flawed. This leads to a disgust with self, with humanity, and with nature.

Gary snyder has made a comparible narrative on our societals modern routine and way of life to the natural lay of the land and how we as humans have severed our hunter/gatherer instincts of primal chaotic nature

The Practice of the Wild is a collection of essays nature, indigenous and other cultures, community and life. The publication date was 1990 and some of the essays were published earlier as magazine articles but over 30 years later it still seems timely. Sadly the problems of habitat destruction, extinction and greedy exploitation of people and the natural world are still with us.

Always say grace

A breathtaking view of the world's wild places, with an astonishing personal history.

Liked this book, a collection of essays from someone who really loves nature and has dedicated a large portion of his life to studying it living with and in it, I dont run across enough of Gary Snyder's books in the used book stores so this was a pleasure to read, something different from the poetry.

A series of beautiful and profound reflections on nature and wilderness, with particular emphasis on what we can learn from the experiences of pre-industrial cultures. For instance, I learned a lot about traditional Japanese culture.

I read the book for our church's upcoming Advent series "Voices in the Wilderness" but also found it affirming some of my teaching on Wendell Berry in my Philosophical Ethics class.