Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Practice of the Wild” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Practice of the Wild

Gary Snyder

4.20 · Rating details · 2,263 ratings · 117 reviews

The nine captivatingly meditative essays in The Practice of the Wild display the deep understanding and wide erudition of Gary Snyder in the ways of Buddhist belief, wildness, wildlife, and the world. These essays, first published in 1990, stand as the mature centerpiece of Snyder’s work and thought, and this profound collection is widely accepted as one of the central tex

...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 190 pages

Published September 20th 1990 by North Point Press (first published 1990)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Practice of the Wild, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Practice of the Wild

Lists with This Book

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Best Environmental Books

902 books — 1,099 voters

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

Best Popular Nature Books on Goodreads

234 books — 16 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.20 ·

Rating details

· 2,263 ratings · 117 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Practice of the Wild

Apr 06, 2020 Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, reviewed

Mmmmm, Gary Snyder. I was first gifted this book by my best friend (since we were three years old!) as I was leaving a long vacation stay with her in Yosemite, where she had a cabin in the Valley because she was essential personnel and at that time they were housed there. You could hear The Falls and see the meadow from different sides of the cabin. Yosemite is the most gorgeous place I've ever been. With her or with friends of hers or at times alone I hiked, scrambled and ambled over every inch Mmmmm, Gary Snyder. I was first gifted this book by my best friend (since we were three years old!) as I was leaving a long vacation stay with her in Yosemite, where she had a cabin in the Valley because she was essential personnel and at that time they were housed there. You could hear The Falls and see the meadow from different sides of the cabin. Yosemite is the most gorgeous place I've ever been. With her or with friends of hers or at times alone I hiked, scrambled and ambled over every inch of it day and night, and it was the most wondrous journey of my life. Every one of the Falls was at peak and there were an unusual number of ephemerals. It felt as if it was all for me though this visit was planned well before we could know when the snow would melt. It was so hard to leave and my bestie made it a bit easier because at the airport she gifted me this book and a book of Gary Snyder's poetry.

I've read it and pieces of it many times over the years, and yearned for it in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic as a reminder that "Nature is orderly," as he writes. "That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order." Yosemite is the most beautiful natural beauty I've ever looked upon and so this book is personal to me and not. I'm not sure he even mentions it, though I know he mentions some peaks. It's probably self-indulgent to even discuss this here: my favorite experience of wild nature -- mountain lion, mother bear not long out of hiberation, with cubs, and so much more -- but returning to the book was a needed reminder that covid-19 too is part of wild nature.

A nature writer with scientific knowledge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, an environmentalist before that term became a cliche, a writing professor (now Emeritus) at UC Davis, devoted family man and in general a gifted and pure soul, Gary Snyder too is one of nature's beautiful creations. He grew up on a farm, lived in Japan to study Zen and upon arriving back chose to make his permanent home in the Sierras, not far from Yosemite, with which he's had a history of personal pleasure and advocacy. His gentle prose (and poetry, but there's none in here) is comforting as is Snyder's celebration of and love for every part of nature, expressed in often breathtakingly beautiful language. Tucked into naturally and not in any way forcefully is his Zen.

I'm not a Buddhist but have found awesome parts in the Dao that have much to say to people of all religions and none. The quotes Snyder chooses most often to make his points are those of Dogen, the man who brought Zen to Japan, and these are organic in Snyder's writing the way the trees are and soil. They help express his reverence for and the joy he takes from mountains, streams, the female form, and forests, and the orderly wildness he recognizes is everywhere, including in cities, including New York. In this book, one of my Favorites, are some of his greatest essays and it has been a balm and a joy to read it again, and at this time.

The essay "At Work in the Woods" is interesting and stands out in a different way. Some people are surprised to come upon Snyder describing his stint as a logger. He needed the money. He was not yet the very soft and very strong voice of nature nor the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and beloved teacher he became. And he speaks of those felling the trees with reverence too. He understands they're part of a system and not The System. His descriptions are of the processes, the stages, the equipment and what excites me, what exactly happened to the trees at every step along the way. He had and has a seriousness about this job I find fascinating. I include this information because some who probably weren't born yet don't like the essay. Well, this was 1954 and he writes: "Those were, in hindsight, the last years of righteous forest management in the United States."

Like every living thing and dead ones too, as he reminds us, each essay brings something different. His wild naturally includes humans, ones he loves and those whose systems, policies and behaviors he reviles, though they are not the focus. In the section of essays on "The Woman Who Married a Bear" he focuses on human wild cultural lore, presenting this old indigenous American story and its mutations and migrations.

The twentieth anniversary edition (from 2010) has a new preface, which is a gem. Gary Snyder is blessed with wisdom, knowledge and humility to not just teach but constantly allow himself to be taught, why is why to many he's an icon. The natural place to end this review for me lies in the new preface. Since my inartful words could never do these essays, his poetry, the eyes with which he looks at the world, do Gary Snyder himself justice, I hope they lead those to whom they speak to his remarkable body of work which was in full bloom when he wrote "The Practice of the Wild":

"Nothing said here is to take away from the elegance, the refinement, the beauty, and the intriguing complexity of what we call civilization, especially the sort of civilization that respects quality over quantity and is not simply an excuse for multinational global piracy. I am intrigued by the sense that culture itself has a wild edge. As Claude Levi-Strauss remarked years ago, the arts are the wilderness areas of the imagination surviving, like national parks, in the midst of civilized minds. The abandon and delight of love-making is, as often sung, part of the delightful wild in us. Both sex and art! But we knew that all along. What we didn't perhaps see so clearly was that self-realization, even enlightenment, is another aspect of our wildness -- a bonding of the wild in ourselves to the (wild) process of the universe." ...more

flag 61 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2012 James rated it it was amazing

Gary is not an armchair ecologist. He earned his title, Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology, by cutting line on wildfires, losing himself in wilderness, reading science and the great poets of Japan and China, and winnowing the wheat from the chaff by diving into Void.

In this seminal, important collection he writes of the etiquette of freedom, and how that relates to wildness. He has learned Nature's great lesson: that wilderness, and wild mind, are not chaotic and out of control, but self-governing. Gary is not an armchair ecologist. He earned his title, Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology, by cutting line on wildfires, losing himself in wilderness, reading science and the great poets of Japan and China, and winnowing the wheat from the chaff by diving into Void.

In this seminal, important collection he writes of the etiquette of freedom, and how that relates to wildness. He has learned Nature's great lesson: that wilderness, and wild mind, are not chaotic and out of control, but self-governing. In everything they do, they follow the grain of one of Nature's most deeply interfused laws: minimal action.

From the book:

Coyote and Ground Squirrel do not break the compact they have with each other that one must play predator and the other play game. In the wild a baby Black-tailed Hare gets maybe one free chance to run across a meadow without looking up. There won’t be a second. The sharper the knife, the cleaner the line of the carving. We can appreciate the elegance of the forces that shape life and the world, that have shaped every line of our bodies—teeth and nails, nipples and eyebrows. We also see that we must try to live without causing unnecessary harm, not just to fellow humans but to all beings. We must try not to be stingy, or to exploit others. There will be enough pain in the world as it is.

Such are the lessons of the wild. The school where these lessons can be learned, the realms of caribou and elk, elephant and rhinoceros, orca and walrus, are shrinking day by day. Creatures who have traveled with us through the ages are now apparently doomed, as their habitat—and the old, old habitat of humans—falls before the slow-motion explosion of expanding world economies. If the lad or lass is among us who knows where the secret heart of this Growth-Monster is hidden, let them please tell us where to shoot the arrow that will slow it down. And if the secret heart stays secret and our work is made no easier, I for one will keep working for wildness day by day.

"Wild and free." An American dream-phrase loosing images: a long-maned stallion racing across the grasslands, a V of Canada Geese high and honking, a squirrel chattering and leaping limb to limb overhead in an oak. It also sounds like an ad for a Harley-Davidson. Both words, profoundly political and sensitive as they are, have become consumer baubles. I hope to investigate the meaning of wild and how it connects with free and what one would want to do with these meanings. To be truly free one must take on the basic conditions as they are—painful, impermanent, open, imperfect—and then be grateful for impermanence and the freedom it grants us. For in a fixed universe there would be no freedom. With that freedom we improve the campsite, teach children, oust tyrants. The world is nature, and in the long run inevitably wild, because the wild, as the process and essence of nature, is also an ordering of impermanence.

...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2019 Walter Michalski rated it it was amazing

We absolutely live in a society

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Sep 13, 2011 Nic King rated it it was amazing

A perpetual evil has been at work destroying the nurturing, life-endowing planet, stripping it of its resources since the fifth century with the rise of small cities. Humans began to detach themselves from nature, associating the wild with a negative connotation. The idea that nature as sacred shortly existed during the Romantic period and throughout the ten years after this book was written humanity once again sees nature as something worth protecting, preserving, and connecting with.
This curr A perpetual evil has been at work destroying the nurturing, life-endowing planet, stripping it of its resources since the fifth century with the rise of small cities. Humans began to detach themselves from nature, associating the wild with a negative connotation. The idea that nature as sacred shortly existed during the Romantic period and throughout the ten years after this book was written humanity once again sees nature as something worth protecting, preserving, and connecting with.
This current evil has been molded to represent the greedy, self-centered capitalist desires of the Industrial power figures running the economic trade. Writing a compellation of essays Gary Snyder forces the read to consider “how the whole human race can regain self-determination in place (nature) after centuries of having been disenfranchised by hierarchy and/or centralized power” (Snyder 1990). This book reveals that we are living in a contradictory time, where as “culture and nature” the actual and living has become a “shadow” in the daunting presence of the insubstantial “political jurisdictions and rarefied economies”(Snyder 1990).

Using a combination of Zen philosophies, and Native American mythology, expressed through personal experiences and travels--Snyder creates his own insightful methodology allowing the read to navigate, and become “on the path, off the trail”. As explained within the book, paths come from the days when walking was used to travel, and signified the inter-weaving connective web of relationships between Humans, Animals, Nature, and the Wild. Snyder draws content from his own path, from researching local aboriginal tribes of northwest Alaska, to his eight year period of studying Zen as a monk in Japan.
Translating a line from Dao Dejing, Snyder interprets the subtle meaning of the “way”; ” ‘a path that can be followed is not a spiritual path’”(Snyder 1990). Paradoxically one must first walk and maintain the path and can then achieve access “off the trail”, as an end result a return to the wild is accomplished. It is established within the path there is a going, but no destination only the wild, and entirety of nature.
To be free is to be able to accept the conditions that come with nature as explained in The practice of the Wild, embracing the open, imperfect, painful, and impermanent. Thus from nature we can infer wilderness, and to speak of wilderness is “to speak of wholeness”(Snyder 1990). How then could this wholeness be achieved when severe deforestation, water and air pollution, extinction, and desolate ecosystems continually arise and remain as unimportant issues for the Occidental civilizations? Snyder aims to provoke enlightenment and encourage the read to become the vocalization that can unite and creatively live in harmony with nature.

In today’s day and age the argument focuses on those valuing the human-centered resource management verses those who value the integrity of the entire nature system. Understanding the difference is key, explicitly in this book where as nature can be seen as a scientific subject studied and analyzed. To understand the wild it must be deciphered from within as “as a quality intrinsic to who we are”(Snyder 1990). In order to connect to the instinctive human nature we first must connect to the “place” or the wild. This land we live on was e wildest and most in tuned to nature prior to white colonization, while the aboriginals shared, fed and lived not from nature but with nature. To call this land “America” is to identify it with the passing political entities that control it. The name commonly found within Native American myth agrees on the name “Turtle Island” for this continent. Snyder wrote, continuing to abuse the land with result in these powers losing their mandate; but observing the events from the time this book was written to the present, I would have to agree that the entities in power now hold a position strong enough to evade penalties and justice and continue to strip the earth to nothing. It is just as the Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki had reversed the line “The State is destroyed, but the mountains and rivers survive” to give it a contemporary reading:
“The mountains and rivers are destroyed, but the State survives.”(Snyder 1990)
Now more than ever does the civilization that can live in harmony with nature needs to rise and gain power to direct and save the existence of nature, creatures, and our world. This book serves as an excellent introduction to enhancing philosophies and perspectives, and offers an efficient amount of other literarily text which Snyder built from to this text. I was heavily intrigued and influenced to inquire further about writing from the heavily quoted Zen Master, Dogen (the philosopher and founder of the Soto school of Japanese Zen) and continue for the defense and preservation of the wild.

...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

May 09, 2013 Roberto rated it liked it

I'm going to put my hands up and say, sorry Gary, it's not you it's me, well maybe it is a little bit you. I wanted to love this so much more (not just because it is one of my wife's favourite books). This is clearly a hugely important, far-reaching, and profound treatise on what the wilderness means, the myths and practices surrounding the wild that continue to inform us and the lessons we ought to learn from them. Snyder writes compassionately, with wisdom and eloquence, and the essays combine I'm going to put my hands up and say, sorry Gary, it's not you it's me, well maybe it is a little bit you. I wanted to love this so much more (not just because it is one of my wife's favourite books). This is clearly a hugely important, far-reaching, and profound treatise on what the wilderness means, the myths and practices surrounding the wild that continue to inform us and the lessons we ought to learn from them. Snyder writes compassionately, with wisdom and eloquence, and the essays combine philosophy, diary, storytelling, poetry, stuff about wood, and stuff that kind of made me zone out. Like the origins of words. I'm sorry. If you're gonna go camping, Gary's your man. I wouldn't describe myself as 'outdoorsy', though i will sometimes nudge the window open a little, if i'm feeling impetuous. But i did find some of this tedious, you'll be sailing along and then you'll find yourself reading page after page on logging with Gary. 'The Cat pulls a crawler-tread "arch" trailer behind it with a cable running from the Cat's aft winch up and over the pulley-wheel at the top of the arch, and then down where the cable divides into three massive chains that end in heavy steel hook yada yada...butt-hooks etc.'

Obviously the guy's a genius, and i kept wishing i had a notebook to hand to copy out some of the passages here, there are so many beautifully expressed truths in this book. Snyder argues for a deeper bond between human life and all other living things, for the benefit of all living things, and for a breaking of the veil between what we perceive as civilisation and our intrinsic connection to the wild - as a vegan the stuff here on the symbiotic nature of life and death and food and the respectful attitudes required if you're going to take a life were particularly moving. 'To acknowledge that each of us at the table will eventually be part of the meal is not just being "realistic." It is allowing the sacred to enter and accepting the sacramental aspect of our shaky temporary personal being.' ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Nov 19, 2020 Dan rated it really liked it

Shelves: environment, best-books-of-the-west

There are some gems here which are examples of exceptional writing. But as a whole Snyder is a better poet (read Turtle Island) than an expository writer.

The sections on logging and forestry during his youth in Washington state were the best written and most enlightening. Logging is very personal to him. He also returned to this theme, several times, of how Europeans over a millennia destroyed the Mediterranean ecosystem. A precursor to what Americans were doing.

Snyder spent many years (in the ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 13, 2020 Numidica rated it it was amazing

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

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jun 09, 2014 Tim Weakley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 50-book-challenge-2014, buddhist-books

Snyder has, in this collection of essays, written from the heart and the soul about his passion for the wild places. I am not a wilderness type, but reading this book makes plain his passion and spiritual commitment. I placed this book on my Buddhist shelf as well because of the author's repeated touching on those principles with regards to the wild. It has a real sense of thusness about it. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 14, 2016 A rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, all-time-favorite, essays, nature, philosophy

Gary Snyder is one of my all-time favorite writers. He is concise and personable. His point of view is pragmatic without being overt. His love for the wild and for people and our personal responsibility to both comes through.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 18, 2021 Tim Weed rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When I first read this essay collection decades ago I found it revelatory. Re-reading it, I can see why I thought that. It really was a formative book for me and, more broadly speaking, I like to think it may be one of the most important books of the 20th century. It did feel less revelatory on this read-through, which I take as an indication that I've internalized whatever it was that hit me so hard all those years ago. If so, that's good news.

If you haven't read these essays, you really must! ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 06, 2014 Jimmy Quenelle rated it it was amazing

Gary Snyder has long been one of my favorite poets. His calls to incorporate neolithic wisdom in our modern lives are important. Snyder has long fostered a deep sense of place in his works. It's a delight for me to read Snyder's prose, which is colored by the fact that he is primarily a poet. He has an amazingly extensive body of work, from his Rip Rap and Cold Mountain Poems in 1956 to his Pulitzer Prize winning Turtle Island (1975) to this book, which is a literary culmination of the world vie ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 08, 2020 Elena Kazarov rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 04, 2012 Robert Dietrich rated it it was amazing

Foundational book for me. Snyder's ideas regarding nature, wildness and wilderness should inform our national conversation regarding environmental policies. Which is not to suggest this is dry, academic stuff, on the contrary, it has wisdom flying off of every page. It speaks to the human condition and it's relation to, and reliance on, the non-human. One you can return to over and over again and gain something different each time. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2015 Richard rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015

West Coast zen + Eastern philosophy + PNW nature writing + hard ecology idealism + esoteric Japanese poetry + personal anecdotes + beat phrasing + Native American mythology + advocacy + moral outrage + regionalism = Gary Snyder.

Not that he's a formula, but, you know.

He's his own genre, folks. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 03, 2011 Tom Morgan rated it it was amazing

Possibly the best book I've ever read. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 25, 2017 Signe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: connecting-with-nature, spirituality, activism

Loved hearing the voice of a naturalist and Buddhist who also worked as a logger. This was the first Gary Snyder work I’ve read and will definitely pick up another.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 28, 2018 Knut rated it it was amazing

Shelves: religion, anthropology, sustainablity, ecology

from http://www.darkmatteressay.org/the-pr...

Critique of Gary Snyder’s writing feels like a sacrilege against the beauty of letters, nature and the elders. Not knowing if he deems me worthy of such relationship, he makes himself a point to assume the position of the grandfather I never had: My own grandparents certainly didn’t tell us stories around the campfire before we went to sleep. Their house had an oil furnace instead, and a small library. So the people of civilization read books. For som ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 12, 2018 Ooi Ghee Leng rated it it was amazing

Snyder's "Practice of the Wild" is an important book, similar to the kind of which you initiate a teen into adulthood, and in Snyder's thesis, he works to initiate the mind to freedom, wilderness, and what it means to be human. Snyder interweaves Buddhist texts, Asian poems and koans, American publications on nature, scholar texts on human psyche and psychology, bioregionality, anthropology, and tribal myths into a singular tour de force on how we humans, indeed, should practice, and so practice ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2017 Julie rated it really liked it

The same week I was reading this book I was trekking the St. Mary's riverbank daily and watching the progress of a huge tunnel sewer project that's supposed to stop our city from pouring untreated sewage into the river. Two of the three huge bald cypress trees that were brilliantly planted by the parks dept. in a low lying spring flood area were gone, bulldozed into oblivion. I could still smell them even though all that was left was a raw gaping maw where they'd been. My immediate response was ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2019 Daniel Elder rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Wonderful essays by poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder, informed by a lifetime spent learning from and honoring First Peoples, practicing as a Buddhist, and living near and exploring wilderness, especially that of North America. The tone he strikes here—something at the intersection of scientific wisdom and spiritual reverence—sat really well with me. It felt right. I have trouble imagining, for myself, a reverence for the earth without a spiritual dimension. He comes across as a cheeky trick ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 14, 2011 Chris rated it liked it

Shelves: deep-thoughts

A diverse and interesting melange of essays that is part memoir, poetry, and philosophy about man and his relationship to the natural world. There are elements from China, Japan, and Native American cultures. It's like a Zen Thoreau. The essays at times seem unrelated to each other but at other times you can sense a seam uniting them. This book was written over twenty years ago and I wonder how the author feels now as it seems his message has been completely ignored. This is one of those books t ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 08, 2018 Jan rated it really liked it

I read practice of the wild and now I’m growing my own herbs and trying to grow an avocado tree!

I liked this novel a lot. At times it was a bit to technical and I’m not a big fan of Gary Snyder his prose, BUT this book made me think about our relationship with nature and it motivated to learn more about the fauna and flora of my own area.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2018 Sherry rated it it was amazing

Another nature read. I met Gary Snyder in the 70s and 80s in SF and at UC Davis and was more tuned into his poetry. Reading these essays helps me reconnect with nature and how makes me sad for the people who are so disconnected from the environment

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2018 Eric Baerren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 28, 2017 Jim Minick rated it really liked it

Many powerful and beautiful essays here.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 26, 2017 Jeff D rated it it was amazing

The preeminent beat poet takes a look at human presence on Earth, reminding us of our guest status and the fact that we are neither alone or in control.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 10, 2020 Aleksandar rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, community, anthropology, nature, philosophy

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 ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 08, 2017 Ľuboš rated it liked it

Shelves: own

Maybe it's because of too high expectations (built on the dozens of appreciative mentions by other environmental thinkers), but this book somehow didn't resonate with me. I couldn't help comparing it to David Abram's writings which always stir my blood. Whereas reading Synder's essays didn't move me at all and sometimes I even had to force myself to read further.

But maybe the expectations weren't too high, just misplaced. I probably expected more rigorous academic philosophy type of writing (an ...more

flag Like · see review

Sep 22, 2017 E. rated it liked it · review of another edition

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. ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 04, 2020 Noosh Baggins rated it liked it

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. ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Environment > Nature

87 users

Writing > Essays

76 users

Nonfiction

60 users

Philosophy

48 users

Poetry

31 users

Environment

21 users

Spirituality

18 users

Biology > Ecology

18 users

Religion > Buddhism

13 users

Science > Natural History

10 users

See top shelves…

About Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

461 followers

Gary Snyder is an American poet (originally, often associated with the Beat Generation), essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Since the 1970s, he has frequently been described as the 'laureate of Deep Ecology'. From the 1950s on, he has published travel-journals and essays from time to time. His work in his various roles reflects his im ...more