The line between
the life of the fields and that of the village
is not hard and fast.
In any case wilderness,
in the sense of being
the most inaccessible part of a given territory,
is seen as a shared space
that is both dangerous and magical,
a place to visit for spiritual
and economic reasons.  P. 26

There is much that humans find disorderly,
but “wild nature” is
the ultimate source of order.
In the nonhuman universe,
not a single leaf that falls from a tree
is ever out of place.  P. 27

East Asian civilizations have never made
the sharp separation between the human
and the rest of biological nature
that is formalized in the “religions of Abraham”
–Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This Abrahamic dichotomy persists
in contemporary monotheisms
and is severely with us yet today.
Most educated Occidental people
who profess to be secularists are still
often in thrall to such dualism.  P. 27

Back On The Fire, essays by Gary Snyder, Ecology, Literature, and the New World Disorder (based on a keynote talk at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment international conference held in Naha, Okinawa, March 4-6, 2003)

A review of the Gary Snider book is timely. Half the country watches in helpless dismay as the Trumpian insurgency uses the federal government and its military, and paramilitary ICE units as a cudgel – to batter disagreement. Former allies are isolated, while murder and atrocity is committed willy-nilly, domestically and internationally. The butcher’s bill grows by the day.

Nature is our home.

“Our” includes all of the human species, enfolded with every living and nonliving entity on the planet. Upon reflection the distinction between living and the non-living is likely to be a linguistic convenience, provisional because we need to communicate.

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This tune by Fleetwood Mac is right for this Friday. Each of us is a gypsy, – here for a while without a long-term lease. Stevie Nicks performs with that velvet voice: