Essays by Gary Snyder North Point Press San Francisco 1990 This book is for Carole on the trail Contents BY WAY OF THANKS ix THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM 3 The Compact 3, The Words Nature, Wild, and Wilderness 8, Wildness it, The World Is Watching 18, Back Home 22 THE PLACE, THE REGION, AND THE COMMONS 25 The World Is Places 2 5, Understanding the Commons 2 9, Bioregional Perspectives 3 7, Finding "Nisenan County" 44 TAWNY GRAMMAR 48 The Same Old Song andDance 48, The Kuuvangmiut and the Humanities 53, Nature's Writing 66, Mother Leopards 68 GOOD, WILD, SACRED 78 Weeding Out the Wild 78, Waterholes 81, Shrines 86, True Nature 90 BLUE MOUNTAINS CONSTANTLY WALKING 97 Fudo and Kannon 97, This 102, Homeless 103, Larger Than a Wolf, Smaller Than an Elk 106, Decomposed no, Walking on Water 113 viii ° CONTENTS ANCIENT FORESTS OF THE FAR WEST 116 After the Clearcut 116, At Work in the Woods 119, Evergreen 126, Excursus: Sailor Meadow, Sierra Nevada 133, Us Yokels 139 ON THE PATH, OFF THE TRAIL 144 Work in Place of Place 144, Freedom at Work 149 THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A BEAR 155 The Story 133, On "The Woman Who Married a Bear" 161, Maria Johns and the Telling of This Story 169, Arkadia 170, At the Bear Dance 171 SURVIVAL AND SACRAMENT 175 An End to Birth 175, Cultured or Crabbed 178, Grace 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 By Way of Thanks Most of the essays in this book had their inception in talks, work­ shops, and conversations that took place over the last fifteen years. I owe much to the many fine people and places that called these thoughts forth. Although my work and curiosity take me far afield, I am foremost a person of the Yuba River country in the Sierra Ne­ vada of northern California. The San Juan Ridge and the many people there with whom I share work, rituals, and ideas are at the core of this exercise. First I want to thank the person to whom this book is dedicated, my wife and partner Carole Koda, who read and discussed it all while in progress. Jerry Tecklin, Bob Greensfelder, Jean Greensfelder, Jim Pyle, Pat Ferris, Gen Snyder, Kai Snyder, Chuck Dockham, Bruce Boyd, Holly Tornheim, Steve Beckwitt, Eric Beckwitt, David Tecklin, Steve Sanfield, Lennie Brackett, Don Harkin, Michael Killigrew, Robin Martin, Arlo Acton, Tony Mo- ciun, David Samuels, Nelson Foster, Masa Uehara, Paul Noel, DeOnne Noel, Will Staple, Michael Brackney, Bob Erickson, Moth Lorenzon, Robbie Thompson, Ann Greensfelder, Sara Greens­ felder, and Jacquie Bellon have all given me particular (often non­ verbal) pointers. The whole San Juan Ridge community has been teacher and friend. I have learned much from my many trips to Alaska. Gary Hol- thaus of the Alaska Humanities Forum taught me where to go and shared his deep appreciation of the north with me at community gatherings in places as diverse as Aleknagik, Fort Yukon, Juneau, Homer, Sitka, and Bethel. Steve Grubis led me down the Kobuk x ° BY WAY OF THANKS River and Bonnie and Hans Boenish put us up. Ron and Suzie Scol- lon introduced me to their work in Athapaskan and other northern language groups, and to the snowy mountains north of Haines. Dick Dauenhauer and Nora Marks Dauenhauer showed me a little of the southeast Alaskan cultural milieu. Jim Kari introduced me to the subtleties of place names. Dick Nelson led me over muskeg and surf into pathless wilds. I thank Roger Rom for teaming up with the University of Alaska to sponsor two successive summer field trips we led in the Brooks Range and James Katz for putting together a float­ ing seminar on the Tatshenshini River. Jan Straley had us chasing Humpback Whales' flukes (as part of her research) in Icy Straits, and Jonathan White sailed the Crusader right through Ford's Terror just to look at a yosemite full of ice and water. Many of my colleagues at the University of California at Davis share the interest in wildness and the interaction of nature and cul­ ture. I have especially appreciated the insights of David Robertson, Jack Hicks, Will Baker, Scott McLean, and David Scofield Wilson. Students in my lectures and seminars have tested my notions and opened my outlook with their fresh and perceptive views. Several small but timely University Research Grants, and the friendly and interested cooperation of the faculty and staff of the English De­ partment, all helped. Some of these essays first took form as talks given at the San Fran­ cisco Jung Institute (several as stimulating collaborations with James Hillman, Gioia Timpanelli, and Ursula Le Guin). I also gave sections of this book as talks at the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, at Lindisfarne Association gatherings, at the Schumacher So­ ciety's annual meeting in Bristol, England, at the Wilderness Con­ ference of 1984 sponsored by the University of Montana, at the Hudson Valley Watershed Conference, at Hollyhock Farm in Brit­ ish Columbia, and many other places. John Stokes (and the Austra­ lian Arts Council) made it possible for Nanao Sakaki and me to travel BY WAY OF THANKS ° xi extensively in Australia and visit parts of the central desert that are not usually open to visitors. Many friends read and offered sound advice on all or parts of the work-in-progress. David Padwa and Peter Coyote gave me bold and useful encouragement, as did Jim Dodge and Peter Berg. Max Oelschlager and Wendell Berry made keen suggestions. Nanao Sakaki of Japan and Turtle Island, Lee Swenson, George Sessions, Tom Lyon of Utah and the Rockies, Paul Shepard, Drum Hadley of Guadalupe Canyon Ranch, Dave Foreman of Earth First!, Dolores La Chappelle, Sherman Paul, Malcolm Margolin, Bob Uhl of Kotzebue, Alaska, Jerry Martien of Areata, Kurt Hoelting of Pe­ tersburg, Alaska, Jerry Gorsline of Port Townsend, Fraser and Ali Lang of Bridge River, British Columbia, Kelly Kindscher of Kan­ sas, Gary Lawless of Maine, Dale Pendell now of Santa Cruz, Greg Keeler of Bozeman, Allen Ginsberg of New York and Boulder, Jack Turner of the Tetons, Jack Loeffler of SantaFe, Jim Snyder of Yosem- ite, Ed Grumbine, Jaan Kaplinski of Estonia, Julia Martin of Cape­ town, South Africa, John Seed of New South Wales, Sansei Yamao of Yakushima, Japan, Peter Bluecloud of Akwesasne, Paul Winter, Lewis MacAdams of The Friends of the L. A. River, Non and Bird of the mountains near Trinidad, Colorado, Dan Kozlowsky of Wis­ consin, Clayton Eshleman of Sulfur, Michael McClure of the Class Mammalia, and Morinaga Soko Roshi of Daishu-in are a few among the many remarkable friends whose lives and works have been part of my meditations as I put together this text. I am grateful to Catherine McClellan, professor emerita of an­ thropology at the University of Wisconsin, for permission to retell the version of "The Woman Who Married a Bear" that she heard from Maria Johns in the early years of her career, as well as her mem­ ories of Maria Johns. I thank Gary Capshaw for the gift of the desk and his memories of Lew Welch. I especially want to thank Yvon and Malinda Chouinard xii · BY WAY OF THANKS and the Patagonia Corporation for generous and swiftly expedited fi­ nancial help in the final year of writing. With so many good friends and critics it would seem hard to be­ lieve that there might still be errors or infelicities. Whatever they are, they belong entirely to me. The Practice of the Wild The Compact One June afternoon in the early seventies I walked through the crackly gold grasses to a neat but unpainted cabin at the back end of a ranch near the drainage of the South Yuba in northern California. It had no glass in the windows, no door. It was shaded by a huge Black Oak. The house looked abandoned and my friend, a student of native California literature and languages, walked right in. Off to the side, at a bare wooden table, with a mug of coffee, sat a solid old gray-haired Indian man. He acknowledged us, greeted my friend, and gravely offered us instant coffee and canned milk. He was fine, he said, but he would never go back to a VA hospital again. From now on if he got sick he would stay where he was. He liked being home. We spoke for some time of people and places along the west­ ern slope of the northern Sierra Nevada, the territories of Concow 4 · THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM and Nisenan people. Finally my friend broke his good news: "Louie, I have found another person who speaks Nisenan." There were per­ haps no more than three people alive speaking Nisenan at that time, and Louie was one of them. "Who?" Louie asked. He told her name. "She lives back of Oroville. I can bring her here, and you two can speak." "I know her from way back," Louie said. "She wouldn't want to come over here. I don't think I should see her. Besides, her family and mine never did get along." That took my breath away. Here was a man who would not let the mere threat of cultural extinction stand in the way of his (and her) values. To well-meaning sympathetic white people this response is almost incomprehensible. In the world of his people, never over- populated, rich in acorn, deer, salmon, and flicker feathers, tocleave to such purity, to be perfectionists about matters of family or clan, were affordable luxuries. Louie and his fellow Nisenan had more im­ portant business with each other than conversations.