Gary Snyder has profound things to say about the wild, about recognizing our wildness, and a fair amount about Buddhist teachings.

Thoughtful, eloquent meditations on wilderness and the interrelationship between culture and nature with occasional infusions of Buddhist spirituality.

I love this.

Lots of insightful, provocative, and helpful ideas to be found on the relationship between humanity, nature, and wilderness, told through Buddhist, Daoist, and indigenous frameworks as interpreted by a white American who has worked both in the logging industry and as a conservation advocate. Through this series of essays, Snyder works out the borders of a definition of "the wild" as a state of being, both internal and external to individuals, in which uncertainty and risk are allowed to exist and in which play and surprise are possible. This stands in contrast to culture/cultivated/ordered states of land/mind/organization which don't tolerate risk/uncertainty but may still be valid. We live our ordinary lives in such neat spaces, but we venture into the wild for inspiration/rejuvenation/self-growth. Snyder also spends a great deal of time/space developing notions of practice as enlightenment itself - how we achieve peace/enlightenment/connectivity by spending time in wild spaces (both internal and external). And that enlightenment takes the form of appreciating the interconnectivity of individuals, species, and systems, which we can promote through conscientious engagement with a particular landscape we live in. This idea of bioregionalism is prominent in Jenny Odell's more modern "How to Do Nothing" (a good accompaniment to this book), and strikes me as a practicable way to engage more people with their local contexts and get them to care about all lands.

Notes:
Ch 2. The place, the region, and the commons
p.44 "Bioregionalism is the entrance of a place into the dialectic of history."
Raises the possibility of environmental/ecological history as perspective/sub-discipline as valid and accepted as Marxism or Feminism etc. Looks like considering interactions between the landscape/ecoregion and how humans adapted to it / how it informed their culture, and what the results of disruption of traditional stewardship relations to land has affected the landscape. In such a perspective, extractive Western cultures can ONLY be villains. But as Snyder notes, if people stay in a place long enough, they will develop a relationship with the land. Quotes a Native American at a conference saying that Whites can become Native Americans if they live in a place long enough for the spirits to rise up from the Earth and speak to them (p. 42).
A place-based identity and cultural adaption to local contexts historically led to sustainable land use. Only the rise of State-ism, monotheism, extractive market orient economies, did it become profitable/desirable to exploit the Commons. Ir's capitalism that swept aside long standing cultural self-regulation and CREATED the tragedy of the commons.
Also argues that people adapted to their bioregion didn't historically invade other bioregions b/c they couldn't live there, that raiding cultures only arose around wealthy sedentary extractive civilizations. Implication is that native peoples were historically quite peaceful (quite dubious, this).
Highlights the tension between centralizing/nationalist political structures and diffuse regionalist structures. Posits that decentralized power structures allow for more sustainable economies based on places rather than resource extraction for profit maximization.

Ch 4. Good, Wild, Sacred
Relationship between good (measured by biological/economic productivity), wild, and sacred lands. For indigenous peoples, all 3 are tiged together in a landscape. For modern Japana, sacred spaces have remained wild, but non-sacred spaces were obliterated by development. In America, no spaces are sacred and few remain wild; those few that do remain wild are mostly areas that aren't very "good". Snyder posits that wildness is what makes a land "good" (productive) - nature balances productivity and system stability optimally for an area when left alone. Occidental culture's need to extract economic productive (though not exclusive to West, also gives examples of China and Japan) ultimately destroys the good, wild and sacred in a land. This arises from the intrinsic vices of ego-greed, hatred, ignorance - though we can overcome ego by training ourselves to self-realization. This delusional ego manifests ultimately as the State, which sees itself as imposing order on a chaotic nature, when in actuality it is simplifying (dangerously so) an already complexly ordered system (just on a temporal and spatial scale that isn't apparent / appreciated by many humans). Then asserts that this "self-seeking ego" in humans doesn't reflect wild nature (i.e. is a product of a particular culture/philosophy and not a thing found in the wild). I think behavioral studies on our primate relatives and other high-intelligence animals strongly suggests otherwise.
P. 101 - We have some wild spaces left in the Americas. And hiking in them allows us to touch the sacred, to get outside of our own heads/leave ego behind in the wake of our physical exertions and our traveling through a landscape much larger than ourselves, producing a feeling of being part of a greater interconnected natural world. We shouldn't see this as an exalted state of consciousness to be pursued only in sacred spaces or to be occupied perpetually, without disturbance by temporal troubles. Rather, it is an awareness of interconnectivity - mountains, forests, agriculture, suburbs, cities, all within the mandala nature of the universe, "never totally ruined never completely unnatural. It can be restored, and humans could live in considerable numbers on much of it. And the best use of that awareness is to bring it back down to the cities, not seeking to escape the quag of politics by entering an enlightened state of mind, but using that enlightened state to see all lands as worth fighting for, interconnected and full of potential. We can live on those lands without destroying them if we make our alterations to the wild with the grain of nature, instead of against the grain (Snyder uses examples of indigenous peoples using fire to cultivate fruit trees and deer habitat for so long that it is difficult to differentiate "natural" from human modified when looking at the paleoecological record). Ultimately Snyder proposes that we can, as a society and as individuals, come to value wild and sacred land, we can become Native Americans in our appreocation/ways, if we live long enough on the land to cultivate a connection to it. And that spaces on the land will become sacred to us by that long connection and imbuement of value.

Ch 5. Blue Mountains Constantly Walking
p. 117 - Snyder, in chapter about zen, non-duality of nature, and the naturalness of our collective being (7-11's and slurpees and all), thinks of empty niche spaces calling species forth into being. Sediment run offs into seas brings forth krill brings forth whales. This is just a slightly different perspective on existing theory in ecology. Then he asks what brings forth humans. Humans are at home in all environments on Earth and are able to manipulate almost everything around us. Snyder suggests that we are a natural result of our environment, our modifications to the globe are in keeping with our evolution and our niche space. All our cement and cultural institutions are no more artificial than a beaver dam or whale song.
Extending this thinking, is there a niche space for civilization? There appears to be ample space, on Earth and beyond, for intelligent species capable of manipulating their environment to expand and alter things as they are. IF we accept evolution as inevitably filling empty niche space, given enough time, then can we consider humanity as the fulfillment of the empty niche space in our solar system and beyond? This bords on a naturalistic justification for human exceptionalism. But there's no reason that humans as formed needed to fill that niche space, just as there's no reason for the whale niche to be filled by a mammal that originated on land - it's just historical chance/ contingency. Thus there's no reason for self-righteousness or thinking ours is a unique destiny, but maybe we could think of expanding our civilization as fulfilling the universe's purpose for us. This is a good way of explaining / accepting the existence/persistence of our civilizations, but not a sufficient justification for any damage we have done or may do to others (species, ecosystems, other extant civilizations). An explanation of origin doesn't necessarily suggest/create values or guidance for HOW to exist/persist. Nor does it justify displacing alternative uses for that niche space b/c it differs from our own use or b/c we could use a larger portion of it (e.g. driving Native Americans off the land b/c they're not developing it sufficiently).

Ch 6 Ancient Forests of the Far West
Discusses respect he has for work in logging industry, historicall amongst his family in the Pacific Northwest and among people he knew during his own time working in forestry. Snyder decries the loss of the greatest trees in the PNW, clear cutting, and the industry capture of USFS that led to its flop from an actual practice of sustainable yield to selling off ecologically devastating and unsustainable clear-cut permits at a financial loss to the public they are supposed to be serving. Most interestingly though, "It is a tragic dilemma that much of the best work men do together is no longer quite right." (p. 127). Humans derive much satisfaction from cooperative physical labor, which feels real ("primary, productive, and needed") in a way modern work doesn't. Who can be proud of farming with massive subsidies and pesticide application, or constructing ugly subdivisions that won't last 100 years b/c they're built with speed and cheapness foremost. I feel this in my own work coding and have always felt an attraction to forestry work and felling trees, but would I would feel guilty about doing such work. During his time in logging, Snyder kept a tiny shrine of tree bark, bird feathers, stone, and bits of egg shell, not as an offering to the forest but instead a reminder of what the forests have to offer us. This is evocative of the home shrines in Asia, a daily presence of nature in the home and a physical focus for/reminder to meditate. He then draws on daoist tale of a forests who passes by a tree he calls "useless" b/c it is gnarled and warped, only to be later haunted by the spirit of that tree saying that its "uselesness" was what had saved it from being turned into lumber like straighter, "stronger" trees the forester had felled. What is viewed as useful depends on the framework which is used to evaluate. "Usefulness" in a productivity/extractionist perspective is often really a diverse set of adaptations to varied environmental circumstances that allow a species/individuals to persist at long time scales. "Useful" in this context is often monoculture good for only one end use by humans, not resilient to change nor adaptive. Then draws parallels between how Americans treat "embarassingly old" citizens, indigenous cultures, and useless marginal forests that weren't sold for timber or were given to Native Americans or are called "overripe" when really they are old wild hugely bio-productive forests. Says that we're clear cutting away the wisdom of the useless to build shopping malls for people who look at indigenous lifestyles and say "I couldn't live like that" when those people barely know how to live at all (I expect Snyder has quite a lot to say about modern obsessions with smart phones and the exportation of our attention/lives to the internet). We're on a path to convert all of the world to a single mode of living/thinking/being by destroying all of the myriad older ways. We need to save forests b/c they are our "sun-dappled underworld", our "source" [of cognitive wilderness].

Ch. 7 On the Path Off the Trail
Japanese artisans became masters of their craft through very long, difficult, repetitive apprenticeships. At the start, they spent multiple years doing a single menial task just to demonstrate that they had the discipline to learn the craft. However this also served to ingrain the motions and movements of the task into their muscle memory seamlessly. Zen monks did the same with their minds/consciousness through long, rigorous meditative training (connection between craft and spiritual development similarly elaborated in a German context in Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund). Snyder connects Zen Buddhism to Daoism, saying that excessive discipline and self abnegation can actually get in the way of the Dao (the way which cannot be followed), and gets in the way of the dissolution of the ego (or really the diminishment of ego and the cultivation of a perspective that experientially situates the ego in the context of an interconnected nature [the 10,000 things i.e. the phenomenological world]). The way can be pursued in everyday life too, not separating spiritual enlightenment from the rest of life/reality via seclusion in an abbey, but rather merging them together. It's only by stepping off the path (cultivated order of human towns/planned lives) and into the wild (natural wilderness, traveling to foreign places/lands, speaking with new people) that we find surprises/surprise ourselves. Static discipline and rigor assumes that all answers can be found sitting in meditation, perhaps with the advice of a senior meditator. Instead, master your time, the 24 hours of the day and the work that comes with it, with rigor and self discipline such that you can find joy and play in carrying out the routine tasks of everyday. To truly master something is not to become so accomplished as to find the task simple, dull, and repetitive. Instead it is to acknowledge, find, and celebrate the unique nuances in every situation and each repetition (this strikes me as a good explanation of why modern assembly line jobs or similar office work is so soul crushing - it attempts to suppress all diversity and maximize uniformity, such that there really ISN'T any difference between repetitions). "Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our 'practice' which will put us on a 'path' - it IS our path. It can be its own fulfillment, too, for who would want to set enlightenment against non-enlightenment when each is its own full reality, its own complete delusion. Dogen was fond of saying that 'practice IS the path'. It's easier to understand this when we see that the 'perfect way' is not a path that leads somewhere easily defined, to some goal that is at the end of a progression. ... The truly experienced person will find the tedious work around the house or office as full of challenge and play as any metaphor of mountaineering might suggest."

And then once you've achieved that mastery of your 24 hours (not just work but physical health, social interactions, balanced sleep), you can step off the path into the wild - not to seek novelty or a difference from the mundane (b/c the mundane and the novel are both part of the Dao and the 10,000 things), but instead to seek surprise and unlooked for growth and different manifestations/perspectives of the Dao. All the world proceeds along natural principles, all of nature is the Dao ("life and matter at play" p. 165), a larger order than the tidy little enclaves of provisional orderliness that we call ways (paths, towns, life plans). To step off the path is to be reminded of this and to be reminded that the 10,000 things and the Dao encompasses our tidy towns within the larger, looser order of the wild world.

Ch. 9 Survival and Sacrament
In the final chapter, Snyder addresses the global ecological crisis directly, spelling out the reasons to be worried about the future: a human population growing unchecked, vanishing forests, and unprecedented rates of extinction. "The mountains and rivers are destroyed, but the State survives." Channeling various indigenous belief systems, Snyder posits that humans' purpose on the planet, to the extent that we have one, is to entertain the rest of nature with our songs and language. I do appreciate the valuation of language and culture which, though not unique to humans, are most articulately developed in our species and which do seem to me to have great value. I'm not sure I would go so far as to say they grant us purpose in the universe, but there's a similarity to Carl Sagan's quote about humanity being the universe's way of appreciating itself that I do enjoy.
Snyder goes on to discuss the difference between cultured and wild ("Culture is an orchard apple, Nature is a crab" p. 191). There are two ways of knowing, one derived from culture and concerning the practical/technical and the other derived from experiencing the wild (with all of its incumbent hardships and uncertainties) concerning understanding of the self and the world (related to ideas in Ch 7). Discusses the fractious efforts to create a culture of wilderness in contemporary society by different movements w/ different perspectives (ecofeminism, deep ecology, Earth First! [Snyder clearly identifies w/ deep ecology movement]) and the broadening of the conservation movement away from wildlife conservation to "environmentalism" that's considers widely enough to include animals, ecosystem health, and urban human health under the same umbrella. Distinguishes between "nature", which exists all across the world, can be studied via scientific inquiry, and "the wild, which is not to be made subject or object...; to be approached it must be admitted from within, as a quality intrinsic to who we are. Nature is ultimately in no way endangered; wilderness is. The wild is indestructible, but we might not see the wild." (p. 194). Snyder ends with some hopeful discussion of what he describes as the "first and last practice of the wild" older than all of the world religions: Grace (p. 196) - an awareness of and appreciation for our place and the interconnected interdependence of the food web. Saying grace and practicing that awareness and appreciation is a good way to integrate the practice of the wild in our everyday lives.

This book is first and foremost a meditation on what it is to be human; providing a lens into the context of wildness.

It found me at precisely the right time. Many of the conclusions Gary Snyder comes to are answers to questions - largely in the form of more questions - I didn’t know I had but nonetheless spend much of my time considering. Here is work I’ll never lose sight of.


“…if we do not recover the commons - regain personal, local, community, and peoples’ direct involvement in sharing (in being) the web of the wild world - that world will keep slipping away.”

“The spirits and the old powers aren’t lost, they just need people to be around long enough and the spirits will begin to influence them.”

“Each dance and its music belong to a time and place. It can be borrowed elsewhere or later in time, but it will never be in its moment again.”

“When humans know themselves, the rest of nature is right there.”

“To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. But myriad things coming forth and experiencing themselves is awakening.” - Dōgen

“‘The path of water is such that when it rises to the sky, it becomes raindrops; when it falls to the ground, it becomes river’ …The path of water is not noticed by water, but is realized by water.”

“Don’t try to prove something hard to yourself, it’s a waste of time; your ego and intellect will be getting in your way; let all such fantastic aspirations go.”

“‘Science went up so high,’ the old one said, ‘that now it’s beginning to come back down. Were climbing up with our old ways knowledge, pretty soon we’ll meet science coming down.’”

“Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else.”

Livro curioso sobre a Ecologia Profunda baseado em nove ensaios com várias pontes entre a vida do próprio autor e algumas meditações sobre a nossa relação enquanto humanos com a natureza selvagem. No entanto achei a tradução péssima e a necessitar igualmente de revisão. Penso que teria sido melhor lê-lo em inglês.

Enjoyed numerous parts of the book, especially ruminations on Buddhism. A lot of it was very specific to places and fauna in the Pacific northwest that I had a hard time understanding or relating to. The Deep Ecology mindset felt noble and commendable, and I liked the emphasis on the importance of community and connection. That said, the book didn't totally grab me overall, and parts felt a bit meandering and random.

I

my bible!

This was so hard to read, but so necessary. I read it slowly because the book invites you to reflect, and I had to let the words sink in and let my mind go all the places Snyder takes us. The long view of humans' relationship with the Earth made me even sadder than I already was about the state of our planet. That's a warning for those suffering environmental depression, but I don't regret it. Very thought provoking and fresh -- every sentence was something new to me. Wish I could make everyone stripping our beautiful gem of a planet of all its resources read this ...

Nature's complexities can be hard to understand, and lead to deep philosophical thinking and exploration. Few writers in the American natural literary canon understand and express this better than legendary naturalist and poet Gary Snyder. A world traveler, keen observer, and lover of the land out there, this is one of his most famous volumes of essays about the world of the outdoors. He talks about Japanese reverence toward nature, the Pacific Northwest where he grew up, paths and trails, ancient forests, sacred spaces, and the true nature of freedom when it comes to the natural world. He is always profound, always interesting, and always thinking something new.

Gary Snyder was a friend of legendary author and poet Jim Harrison, who I've always enjoyed. The two men had a lot in common, and while Jim's gone, Gary remains very much a man of the outdoors, even at 92 years old.

This short and powerful book is reminding us to be cognizant with everything that we co-exist with in today’s society. Wow! This book is terrifying and honest about what we see, watch and read daily. Mind you that this was written by Gary Snyder before the C - 1 9, the big tremors in the areas with earthquake faults, the avian flu, the strong tornadoes happening, the need to respecting other cultures and other unworldly things. My take on this is that all these are linked to each other and his essays are simply fascinating to read and comprehend why we are here today. I like this short book because it gave me a different perspective and respect for everything that I touched on daily.