Origins

Everywhere to Go

Gary Snyder started working outside early in his life.

At sea, on the mountains, abroad; Snyder labored as a fire lookout, a chokersetter in the logging industry, trail crew for the US Parks Service, wanderer Japan.

So it's no wonder that this connection to the outdoors, to nature, has generated some of the most authentically place-ful American poems. No, not peacefu. Place-ful. As in we're all standing on that exact spot, the very particular boulder that Gary Snyder describes.

He can even bring us to his writing desk, as he soliloquizes his computer (sorry PC).

Snyder is able to articulate the spirit of backcountry, of discovery, as he experiences it.

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.

He's searching for the trail as much as we are.

I've got everywhere to go,

-KK

*"The Trail is Not a Trail" by Gary Snyder, from Left Out in the Rain, 1986.