Gary Snyder found place outside human destruction.
Today smoke haze means differently.
Garmin inReach Mini salvation.
Riot dying vaccine free.
Gary Snyder:
MID-AUGUST AT SOURDOUGH MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
compare his:
BURNING THE SMALL DEAD
Burning the small dead
branches
broke from beneath
thick spreading
whitebark pine.
a hundred summers
snowmelt rock and air
hiss in a twisted bough.
sierra granite;
Mt. Ritter—
black rock twice as old.
Deneb, Altair
The second Gary Snyder poem connects with that which is beyond human intervention. The first did when he wrote it, but presently does not. Different Deborah Numbers.
Enable students to see this? With what practical value?
Gary Snyder poems reprinted in David Hinton, The Wilds of Poetry.
Living on Unstable Ground 