Above Pate Valley by Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is one of our best nature poets. I think you can see here how Zen Buddhism has influenced him--he treats nature with a reverence.
Above Pate Valley
We finished clearing the last
Section of trail by noon,
High on the ridge-side
Two thousand feet above the creek
Reached the pass, went on
Beyond the white pine groves,
Granite shoulders, to a small
Green meadow watered by the snow,
Edged with Aspen—sun
Straight high and blazing
But the air was cool.
Ate a cold fried trout in the
Trembling shadows. I spied
A glitter, and found a flake
Black volcanic glass—obsidian—
By a flower. Hands and knees
Pushing the Bear grass, thousands
Of arrowhead leavings over a
Hundred yards. Not one good
Head, just razor flakes
On a hill snowed all but summer,
A land of fat summer deer,
They came to camp. On their
Own trails. I followed my own
Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,
Pick, singlejack, and sack
Of dynamite.
Ten thousand years.
Above Pate Valley
We finished clearing the last
Section of trail by noon,
High on the ridge-side
Two thousand feet above the creek
Reached the pass, went on
Beyond the white pine groves,
Granite shoulders, to a small
Green meadow watered by the snow,
Edged with Aspen—sun
Straight high and blazing
But the air was cool.
Ate a cold fried trout in the
Trembling shadows. I spied
A glitter, and found a flake
Black volcanic glass—obsidian—
By a flower. Hands and knees
Pushing the Bear grass, thousands
Of arrowhead leavings over a
Hundred yards. Not one good
Head, just razor flakes
On a hill snowed all but summer,
A land of fat summer deer,
They came to camp. On their
Own trails. I followed my own
Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,
Pick, singlejack, and sack
Of dynamite.
Ten thousand years.
Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco in 1930. He was a member of the beat generation and is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently a professor at the University of California at Davis.
posted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at 10:48 PM
6 Comments:
...ten thousand years...that's strong.
i love how he tells his story and doesn't just go off on some sappy description of the scenery in an avalanche of similes.
Snyder sometimes dates his work by going back to the Neolithic. Ten thousand years is how he thinks.
great choice. snyder is the man!
hmm.nice to read this.
Appreciative of 'nature', but he doesn't side with nature or condemn himself either--but mostly accepts his actions or his trail--which may be what history is like but comprised of many others
I don't know about you but to me the poem speaks about the irony of man's appreciation of beauty/nature and his continued destruction of it.
After beautifully describing and immersing the reader in the scenery, he does the reveal: the man is not simply a man but a miner or laborer who is being tasked with digging into and effectively destroying the mountain for the sake of progress.
The final line of "Ten Thousand Years" is a way of setting the somber tone. We were shown the beauty of the surroundings and then shown the man is here to destroy it. The ten thousand years gives a sense of how untouched the place is and how easily and rapidly we destroy it.
So.. no Zen Buddhism here. Try and look past the surface next time okay?
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