Dylan Lorio-MacNamara - Gary Snyder, "Turtle Island", thoughts

I recently read Gary Snyder's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poems and prose, Turtle Island, and found a lot of similarities between Snyder's writing and the concepts Abram discusses in his book. Woven throughout almost all of the entries is an underlying commitment to living a life on this earth which gives and takes equally in the process of survival, holding oneself responsible for actions taken, and understanding that each individual exists as part of a broad community of life beings sharing the same space. Snyder talks of intimate encounters with other humans and non-human beings, and in his descriptions we find connections. Like Abram, Snyder seeks to restructure the way modern culture approaches the natural world, emphasizing the wisdom and ingenuity of primal, oral cultures such as the Navajo or Anasazi. He closes his book with a series of essays, in which he advocates for a radical transformation of government to give voice to the non-human world. I highly recommend Snyder if you're interested in the environmental movement.

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