p. vii “Dear Gary”: from letter dated January 19, 1987.
p. vii “Dear Wendell”: from letter dated August 28, 1985.
p. ix “binocular vision”: from letter dated March 11, 1983. In an interview published in Conversations with Wendell Berry (2007), Berry also makes the following statement: “Gary Snyder and I agree on a lot of things, but his point of view is different from mine and it has been immensely useful to me. Some differences make for binocular vision.”
p. ix “impulse to speak”: from letter dated July 22, 1980.
p. x “draws on”: Gary Snyder, The Real Work: Interview & Talks, 1964–1979. Wm. Scott McLean, ed. (New York: New Directions, 1980), p. 124.
p. xii “a book by a young writer”: Jack Shoemaker, “A Long Shelf,” in Wendell Berry: Life and Work, Jason Peters, ed. (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2007), p. 316.
p. xii “an impulse of reverence”: Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 35.
p. xii “reading for pleasure”: from letter dated July 24, 1973. Jack Shoemaker had sent Berry some pamphlets of Snyder’s Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End (Berkeley, CA: Four Seasons Foundation, 1970).
p. xii “to help with work”: from letter dated November 1, 1973.
p. xiii “moving event”: Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, “Poetry Reading at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 3, 1977,” Audio Recording (San Francisco, CA: The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, 1977).
p. xiii “I have been keeping”: from letter dated April 9, 1974.
p. xiv “The day that Gary”: Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, “Poetry Reading at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 3, 1977.”
p. xvi “delighted”: from letter dated February 17, 1975.
p. xvi “music”: from letter dated July 25, 1976.
p. xvi “Well, last spring”: Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, “Poetry Reading at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 3, 1977.”
p. xviii “native to this place”: In reference to Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1994), an expanded version of the University of Kentucky Blazer Lecture he delivered in 1991. The book was reprinted by Counterpoint Press in 1996.
p. xx “We are going to visit”: from letter dated December 23, 1976.
p. xx “distant neighbors”: from letter dated March 20, 1977.
p. xx Wendell Berry, “Life on (and off) Schedule,” Organic Gardening and Farming (August 1977), pp. 44–51.
p. xxii “spiritual survival”: Gary Snyder, “The Etiquette of Freedom,” in The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1990), p. 21.
p. 3 July 7, 1973: Snyder’s note was sent on a poetry postcard of “Clear Cut” (Detroit, MI: The Alternative Press, n.d.), a poem later published in Turtle Island (1974).
p. 3 Continuous Harmony: Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony (1972).
p. 3 Ghost Dance: Weston La Barre, Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1970).
p. 4 Jack Shoemaker: a mutual friend of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, and long-standing publisher of their work through Sand Dollar Books, North Point Press, Pantheon, Shoemaker and Hoard, and Counterpoint Press. For more on this relationship see Jack Shoemaker, “A Long Shelf,” in Wendell Berry: Life and Work, Jason Peters, ed. (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2007), and interviews with Shoemaker in The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The Practice of the Wild (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2010).
p. 4 40 acre farm: Berry discussed the purchase of this additional acreage in his Elliston Lectures at the University of Cincinnati, given while he was the poet-in-residence in 1974.
p. 5 December 6, 1973: Snyder’s note was sent on a Smithsonian Institution postcard of a Chinese painting by Chao Yung titled Horse and Groom (AD 1347).
p. 5 Tanya Berry: Wendell Berry’s wife.
p. 5 Stewart Brand: editor of The Whole Earth Catalog and founder of Co Evolution Quarterly; also a Lindisfarne Fellow.
p. 5 Lawrence Ferlinghetti: poet, publisher, and cofounder of City Lights Books.
p. 5 Michael McClure: poet and playwright of the Beat Generation.
p. 6 Spring and Asura: Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese modernist poet and author of Spring and Asura (1922), which Snyder translated in The Back Country (1968).
p. 6 Den Berry: Wendell and Tanya Berry’s son.
p. 6 “To Gary Snyder”: published in Apple 9 (1974) and To What Listens (1975). Berry gave a copy of To What Listens to Snyder with the inscription “To Gary / with greetings / from across the way. Wendell.” A slightly different version of this poem was later published in A Part (1980).
p. 6 “Poem for Den”: this poem was not published.
p. 6 One of my neighbors: in reference to Owen Flood. Berry dedicated Farming: A Handbook (1970) to Owen and Loyce Flood, and wrote about the Floods in “Does Community Have a Value?” in Home Economics (1987). He also dedicated Three Memorial Poems (1977) to Owen Flood, who passed away in March of 1974.
p. 7 “Its hardship”: This quote is the concluding line of section two of Berry’s poem Work Song titled “A Vision.” The poem was later published in Clearing (1977).
p. 8 February 17, 1975: Berry’s note was sent on a poetry postcard of “Falling Asleep” (Austin, TX: Cold Mountain Press, 1974), a poem later published in A Part (1980).
p. 8 agriculture book: Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977).
p. 8 Bob G.: Bob Greensfelder, a classmate of Snyder’s from Reed College who lives at San Juan Ridge.
p. 9 Masa: Masa Uehara Snyder, Snyder’s wife.
p. 9 People’s Land: Peter Barnes, The People’s Land: A Reader on Land Reform in the United States (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1975).
p. 9 Old Jack: Wendell Berry, The Memory of Old Jack (1974).
p. 10 on my book: Gary Snyder, The Old Ways: Six Essays (1977).
p. 10 agriculture book: Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977).
p. 10 Steve: Steve Sanfield, a poet and storyteller from San Juan Ridge.
p. 11 Gen: Gen Snyder, Gary and Masa’s son.
p. 11 Kai: Kai Snyder, Gary and Masa’s son.
p. 12 Kuksu: Journal of Backcountry Writing, a literary magazine founded and edited by San Juan Ridge poet Dale Pendell.
p. 12 Fred Martin: was managing editor at New Directions.
p. 12 Gaia biosphere: In the early 1970s, Lindisfarne Fellow James Lovelock and Sidney Epton were among those who formulated the Gaia Hypothesis, which proposed the earth to be a self- regulating community of living organisms. This theory was linked to Lovelock’s earlier work from the 1960s that investigated whether or not Mars was once a life-supporting planet.
p. 13 poem from you: Gary Snyder, “Berry Territory,” first published in New Directions Anthology 35 (1977). The poem appeared in a somewhat different form in Axe Handles (1983).
p. 13 farming book: Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977).
p. 13 Jon Beckmann: was publisher of Sierra Club Books from 1973 to 1994.
p. 13 Sim Van der Ryn: a researcher and builder in sustainable architecture and bioregional design. He is a Lindisfarne Fellow and founder of the Farallones Institute, a center that designed and managed the Integral Urban House, a 1970s self-reliant urban homestead in Berkeley, California.
p. 14 Bob Callahan: was publisher of Turtle Island Books.
p. 14 friendliness between us: Berry published letters in CoEvolution Quarterly (Summer 1976) expressing his disapproval of the journal promoting the feasibility of inhabiting space colonies. Stewart Brand printed his ambivalent response to the letters.
p. 14 University: Berry was in the English Department at the University of Kentucky 1964–1977 and 1987–1993.
p. 15 Odum’s: Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society (New York: Wiley, 1971).
p. 15 Energy book: Energy and Power: A Scientific American Book (New York: Freeman, W. H. & Co., 1971).
p. 15 Brown’s: Jerry Brown, Governor of California, 1975–1983.
p. 15 read poesy together: Snyder and Berry would read poetry together for the first time on March 3, 1977, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
p. 16 For W.B.’s Unsettling of America: An abbreviated version of this statement later appeared on the book jacket of The Unsettling of America (1977).
p. 19 40077: In the 1970s, while Snyder was working on Turtle Island, he began using a self-created dating system that he called Homo Sapiens Dating, or Upper Paleolithic Dating. It is based on the principle that since different calendars (Chinese, Jewish, India, Meso-America) date in accord with their own mythologies, it might also serve contemporary, postmodern human beings to consider a calendar based on when the first aesthetic or spiritual seeming objects begin to show up in the archaeological record. Such are the southwestern European and North African cave wall paintings, and various objects that represent fish, or animals, or birds. Based on what was known forty years ago, Snyder selected the number 40,000 to mark the start of the twentieth century. Later cave paintings have since been discovered with animal art that is dated even earlier. For that and other reasons, Snyder has stopped using the dating system.
p. 19 might freeze across: January 1977 was the coldest month in the Ohio Valley’s history. Long stretches of the Ohio and Kentucky rivers froze across.
p. 19 California Arts Council: Snyder was appointed to the Board of the California Arts Council by Governor Jerry Brown and served from 1974 to 1979.
p. 19 agricultural disaster: At the bottom of this letter, Snyder has drawn an indigenous pictograph of “rain clouds.”
p. 19 Ramanujan’s translations: A.K. Ramanujan was an Indian poet, translator, and scholar. He was the editor and translator of several books, including The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967).
p. 20 George Hart’s study: George Hart, The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1975).
p. 20 draft of an article: Wendell Berry, “Life on (and off) Schedule,” Organic Gardening and Farming (August 1977).
p. 21 Jerry Goldstein: was editor of Organic Gardening and Farming at Rodale Press.
p. 23 your interview: in reference to Snyder’s interview with Peter Barry Chowka in the East West Journal (Summer 1977), reprinted in The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964–1979, Scott McLean, ed. (1980). In this interview Snyder also spoke of the importance of Wendell Berry and his work.
p. 24 an essay disapproving: Wendell Berry, “The Specialization of Poetry,” in The Hudson Review 28 (Spring 1975); later published in Standing by Words (1983).
p. 25 Grand Coulee: In the 1930s, Snyder’s father was a labor organizer for workers at Grand Coulee Dam, at the time the largest multiuse dam project in the world.
p. 25 Jarold Ramsey: the compiler and editor of Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country (Seattle, WA: Univ. of Washington Press, 1977).
p. 25 William Stafford: was Oregon Poet Laureate from 1975 to 1990.
p. 25 Warm Springs Indian Reservation: At Reed College, Snyder and Dell Hymes did fieldwork with anthropology professors David and Katherine French at Warm Springs Indian Reservation. After graduating from Reed, Snyder worked on the reservation (1951, 1954) as a timber scaler and choker setter, which shaped his book Myths & Texts (1960).
p. 25 book on Asia and nature: In 1970, Snyder began an environmental history book for the John Muir Institute that was later titled The Great Clod project. Although the book was not completed, sections of it were published in CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1978) and The Gary Snyder Reader (1999).
p. 27 egb: Eva Grace Brumett, a neighbor who typed Snyder’s dictated letters and worked as his assistant for several years.
p. 27 Enclosure: Gary Snyder, “True Night,” in Axe Handles (1983).
p. 28 Ishi: Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (1961).
p. 28 Lao Tzu: a Chinese philosopher and teacher of Taoism; also spelled as Lao-tsu throughout the letters.
p. 28 Maury Telleen: was an agrarian, editor, and founder of The Draft Horse Journal. Berry dedicated The Unsettling of America to Telleen and wrote about him in “Going Back — or Ahead — to Horses” (1980) in The Gift of Good Land (1981). When Telleen passed away in 2011, Berry wrote a memorial that was published in The Draft Horse Journal and later in It All Turns on Affection (2012).
p. 28 Rodale Press: Berry was contributing editor at Rodale Press from 1977 to 1979, publisher of Organic Gardening and Farming and New Farm.
p. 28 Stephen Brush: an anthropologist, then at the College of William and Mary.
p. 29 some haikus: Steve Sanfield sent a group of poems titled “Drought” (1976).
p. 29 Larry Korn: a student of Masanobu Fukuoka, who helped edit the English-language version of The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1978).
p. 29 Banyan Ashram: Gary Snyder, “Suwa-No-Se Island and the Banyan Ashram,” in Earth House Hold (1969).
p. 30 Leroy Quintana: author of Hijo del pueblo: New Mexico poems (1976).
p. 30 benefit reading: “Words for Whales: A Greenpeace Benefit,” March 23, 1978; an audio recording of the event is archived at the University of California, Davis.
p. 30 brand new play: Michael McClure’s Minnie Mouse and the Tap-Dancing Buddha was being performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.
p. 30 Maidu: indigenous tribes and bands of the central Sierra Nevada.
p. 31 satori: the attainment of comprehension and enlightenment for Zen Buddhists.
p. 31 I send a poem: Wendell Berry, “The River Bridged and Forgot,” later published in The Wheel (1982).
p. 32 I enclose a translation: Wendell Berry, “Ronsard’s Lament for the Cutting of the Forest of Gastine,” a partial translation of Ronsard’s Elegy XXIV, later published in A Part (1980).
p. 32 nature of evil: Snyder wrote about the question of evil in “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution” in Earth House Hold (1969).
p. 33 editorial meeting: This issue of the Journal for the Protection of All Beings, guest edited by Snyder, Meltzer, Ferlinghetti, and McClure, was copublished with CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1978).
p. 33 for plants and trees: William LaFleur, “Sattva: Enlightenment for Plants and Trees in Buddhism.”
p. 33 Asia book workings: Gary Snyder, “‘Wild’ in China.”
p. 33 poem by Peter Blue Cloud: “Rattle.”
p. 33 bird watching journals: Peter Warshall, “Puffins and Peregrines: Excerpts from my Farallones Journal.”
p. 34 poem appear both places: The poem was published in The Hudson Review (Spring 1979).
p. 34 Peru trip: Wendell Berry, “An Agricultural Journey in Peru” (1979), in The Gift of Good Land (1981).
p. 36 Leander Poisson: Leander Poisson and Gretchen Vogel Poisson later published Solar Gardening: Growing Vegetables Year-Round the American Intensive Way (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1994).
p. 37 New Alchemy: The New Alchemy Institute was a twelve-acre research farm founded by John and Nancy Jack Todd and William McLarney. It was established in 1969 to investigate organic agriculture, aquaculture, and shelter design. John and Nancy Jack Todd are also Lindisfarne Fellows and authors of Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1994).
p. 38 Robert Aitken: was a Zen teacher and social activist who cofounded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha (1959) with his wife Anne Hopkins Aitken. Aitken also taught sesshins at the San Juan Ridge community and the Ring of Bone Zendo at Kitkitdizze.
p. 38 koans: Buddhist training stories, phrases, or riddles that invite meditation and clarity.
p. 39 Hokkaido: The northernmost and second largest island of Japan.
p. 39 going together to Alaska: Gary and Masa Snyder were scheduled to teach, read poetry, and perform dance in Ketchikan, Sitka, and Juneau with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.
p. 40 a teacher: Harold Cassidy was a retired professor of chemistry at Yale University, living in Madison, Indiana. He was a leader in a local fight against the building of the now-abandoned Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant at Marble Hill, Indiana. In June of 1979, Berry was among eighty-nine protesters arrested at the nuclear plant for crossing a property fence in an act of civil disobedience.
p. 40 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: in reference to “The Gift of Good Land,” a speech sponsored by the Clarence Jordan Institute for Ethical Concerns at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1979).
p. 41 The Arrogance of Humanism: David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978).
p. 41 Gary Nabhan: This trip to Arizona with agricultural ecologist and Lindisfarne Fellow Gary Nabhan was later discussed in Berry’s “Three Ways of Farming in the Southwest” (1979) in The Gift of Good Land (1981). Berry offered a further discussion of Nabhan’s work on agriculture in Arizona and New Mexico in “Getting Along with Nature” (1982) in Home Economics (1987).
p. 42 Gregory Bateson: was an anthropologist, social scientist, and Lindisfarne Fellow, whose books Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979) intersected across many fields. Bateson died in 1980 at the Lindisfarne Guest House at Green Gulch Farm, part of the San Francisco Zen Center.
p. 42 a copy of a paper: Gary Snyder, “Poetry, Community, and Climax,” in The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964–1979 (1980).
p. 43 a little book: Peter Blue Cloud, Back Then Tomorrow, preface by Gary Snyder (Brunswick, ME: Blackberry Press, 1978).
p. 43 recently published B.A. thesis: Gary Snyder, He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (1979).
p. 44 University of Hawaii: Gary and Masa Snyder were visiting artists with the InterArts Hawaii program. They participated in a symposium titled “Poetry and Dance of Life and Place.” While there, Snyder read poetry with W. S. Merwin at the Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu.
p. 44 electric fence: Berry also wrote an article about fences for Organic Gardening and Farming, titled “A Short Tour around the Subject of Fences” (May 1978).
p. 44 new poems: in reference to Berry’s Sabbath poems, an ongoing practice started in 1979. Sabbath poems from 1979 to 1997 are in A Timbered Choir (1998), 1998–2004 in Given (2006), and 2005–2008 in Leavings (2010). The poems are now collected in This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (2013).
p. 45 The pages in the Fall ’78: Gary Snyder, “‘Wild’ in China,” reprinted in The Gary Snyder Reader (1999).
p. 46 Michael Harner: Michael Harner and Alfred Meyer, Cannibal (New York: Morrow, 1979).
p. 46 Fukuoka’s work: Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming, Larry Korn, ed., preface by Wendell Berry (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1978).
p. 49 the enclosed essay: Wendell Berry, “The Gift of Good Land,” in Sierra Club Bulletin (1979), later published in The Gift of Good Land (1981).
p. 49 Larry Stains: a journalist and editor of New Shelter from 1978 to 1982.
p. 49 an agronomist and a botanist: Timothy Taylor, an agronomist at the University of Kentucky; Bill Martin, a botanist at Eastern Kentucky University. Observations from this trip were later developed in Berry’s essay “The Native Grasses and What They Mean” (1979) in The Gift of Good Land (1981).
p. 50 Judy Hurley: was an activist and teacher in Santa Cruz. Snyder met her while studying Zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan.
p. 50 article for Shelter: This article was not written.
p. 50 Chuang-tzu: a Chinese philosopher of the fourth century bce.
p. 51 M.C. Bateson: Mary Catherine Bateson, an anthropologist and Lindisfarne Fellow.
p. 51 sangha: community activities, assembly, or gathering.
p. 51 Mountains and Rivers Sutra: Dōgen Kigen was a thirteenth-century Buddhist teacher and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan, whose work became important to Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996). Snyder also wrote about Dōgen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra in “Blue Mountains Constantly Walking” in The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 51 the enclosed: Berry enclosed a typescript of the Sabbath poems of 1979.
p. 52 my brother: John M. Berry, Jr., lawyer and farmer, was involved in the Kentucky State Senate from 1974 to 1982.
p. 52 Green Gulch: Green Gulch Farm, part of the San Francisco Zen Center (1972) and home to the Lindisfarne Guest House.
p. 52 the sake of a novel: Wendell Berry, Remembering (1988).
p. 53 any place else: Berry later addressed these issues in “The Loss of the University” (1984) in Home Economics (1987)
p. 54 Heraclitean Fire: Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature (Concord, MA: Paul & Co. Pub. Consortium, 1978).
p. 56 Thomas Merton: was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was a poet, essayist, and student of comparative religion interested in establishing a dialogue between Christianity and Zen Buddhism. After moving to Lanes Landing in 1965, Wendell and Tanya Berry met Merton though a mutual friendship with photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.
p. 56 “prayer has been valid”: from T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Four Quartets (1945).
p. 59 “meat” for our use: in reference to Genesis 9:2–3.
p. 59 Meister Eckhart: a thirteenth-century Dominican mystic. Twentieth-century Zen Buddhists such as D. T. Suzuki have noted similarities between Eckhart’s teachings and Buddhism.
p. 60 Catholic Workers: The Catholic Worker movement was founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.
p. 60 Trappist Monks: a cloistered and contemplative order of Cistercian monastics.
p. 60 the little piece I have enclosed: Snyder enclosed a homily written by Fr. Willigis Jäger, OSB, titled “This is my Body.” The talk was delivered in 1979 at the So. Leyte sesshin led by Yamada Roshi. In a marginalia note, Snyder described Jäger as “a Christian-Zen priest.”
p. 60 Turtle Island: An indigenous name for North America; see the “Introductory Note” to Snyder’s Turtle Island (1974).
p. 61 my new book: Gary Snyder, The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964–1979 (1980).
p. 63 [all?]: This bracketed word does not note an editorial question of legibility. It is in Berry’s letter and questions Snyder’s rendering of Genesis 9:2–3.
p. 64 “atoned”: The question of “atonement” or being “at-one-ment” with the maker was also taken up in Berry’s “A Secular Pilgrimage” and “Discipline and Hope” in A Continuous Harmony (1972).
p. 65 “dissociation of sensibility”: from T.S. Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921).
p. 68 David Padwa: founder of Agrigenetics Corporation (est. 1975).
p. 69 Teilhard evolutionists: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest who proposed that the universe was evolving toward a maximum level of consciousness and technological complexity. His theories on original sin and evolution were condemned by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
p. 74 last essay I did: Gary Snyder, “Poetry, Community, and Climax” in The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964–1979 (1980).
p. 75 “secret history of the Mongols”: Jack Shoemaker published The Secret History of the Mongols, a translation done by Paul Kahn, based on a translation by Francis Cleaves (North Point Press, 1984). Snyder and Shoemaker had typescripts of the text in 1979–1980, while preparing to edit and revise it for publication.
p. 76 Genesis 9:10
p. 77 Bill Devall: was a sociologist and environmental philosopher, as well as a central participant in the Deep Ecology movement.
p. 78 George Sessions: an environmental philosopher at Sierra College.
p. 81 essay on the atom bomb: Teilhard de Chardin, “Some Reflections on the Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb,” in The Future of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
p. 81 R. Buckminster Fuller: was an architect, Unitarian minister, systems theorist, and futurist, well known for popularizing the geodesic dome and shelter.
p. 81 C. S. Lewis’s trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945).
p. 81 Edward Abbey: a novelist, essayist, and controversial environmental activist. Berry wrote an essay titled “A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey” (1985) that is published in What Are People For? (1990).
p. 82 The stanzas from Dunbar: In addition to a revised manuscript of the Sabbath poems (c. 1979–1980), Berry enclosed “From Dunbar,” a poem that was not later published.
p. 83 Wes Jackson: an agronomist and geneticist who cofounded The Land Institute (est. 1976) with his first wife, Dana Jackson. Wes and Dana Jackson are also Lindisfarne Fellows. Berry dedicated Home Economics (1987) to Wes Jackson.
p. 83 an article about them: Wendell Berry, “New Roots for Agricultural Research” (1981), in The Gift of Good Land (1981).
p. 84 Time article: Melvin Maddock, “In Tennessee: The Last Garden,” Time (December 1980).
p. 84 a little permission here: Snyder requested permission to use the passage “My feet are cold . . . so are mine” from Berry’s Sayings and Doings (1975). Snyder quoted this passage in “The Old Masters and the Old Women: Foreword to Sōiku Shigematsu’s A Zen Forest,” later reprinted in A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds (1995).
p. 84 George Gaylord Simpson and P. B. Medawar: Their reviews of The Phenomenon of Man are reprinted in Darwin, Philip Appleman, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979).
p. 87 Means: In addition to P. B. Medawar’s review of The Phenomenon of Man, Snyder sent an article by Russell Means, a prominent Oglala Sioux activist and founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Based on the conversation between Berry and Snyder, the article under discussion was likely “For America to Live, Europe Must Die,” a speech that Means delivered in 1980 at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
p. 88 some of my old work: Berry was revisiting two of his early novels, Nathan Coulter (1960) and A Place on Earth (1967), to be published as revised editions with North Point Press.
p. 88 Leonard Peltier: a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977, Peltier was controversially convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the shooting of two FBI agents during a conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975.
p. 90 Bill Thompson: The correspondence between William Irwin Thompson and Berry concerned arguments about the role and place of technology in Christian eschatology. There was also a discussion of Berry’s essay “Standing by Words,” the opening lecture given at the Lindisfarne Fellows Conference in 1978. The lecture was then published by Lindisfarne Press (1980) and printed in The Hudson Review (Winter 1980–81).
p. 90 June 9, 1981: Snyder’s note was sent on a postcard from the Okinawa Prefectural Museum.
p. 91 Small Farm [sic: New Farm]: Snyder was referring to the New Farm, published by Rodale Press, where Berry was formerly a contributing editor.
p. 94 busy with a long essay: “Poetry and Place” (1982), published in Standing by Words (1983).
p. 95 Lindisfarne in Colorado: The Lindisfarne Association had moved to Crestone, Colorado. Their 1982 annual meeting, which Berry and Snyder attended, was titled “The Land: Its Ecological Development and Its Economic Understanding.”
p. 95 Zendo building project: Ring of Bone Zendo, named after a line in Lew Welch’s poem “I Saw Myself.” Welch disappeared from Kitkitdizze during a period of severe depression in 1971. Snyder’s poems “For/From Lew” and “For Lew Welch in a Snowfall” speak of Welch’s absence and ongoing presence at Kitkitdizze.
p. 96 Kathleen Raine: a British poet, literary critic, Lindisfarne Fellow, founder and editor of Temenos, and founding member of the Temenos Academy. In 2003, Raine passed away and Berry dedicated This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (2013) in her memory. Berry also wrote an essay in appreciation of Raine titled “Against the Nihil of the Age” (2001) later published in Imagination in Place (2011).
p. 97 “Energy flowing . . .”: from R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics 2: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (New York: Macmillan, 1979).
p. 98 “People, Land, and Community”: published in The Schumacher Lectures, Volume II, Satish Kumar, ed. (London: Blond and Briggs, 1984); a later version of the essay was published in Standing by Words (1983).
p. 99 “Onearth” invitation: In 1982, the Findhorn Foundation purchased Findhorn Bay Caravan Park in Moray, Scotland. That same year, the foundation organized the “Onearth Planetary Village Gathering,” which Berry and Snyder spoke at.
p. 99 Mr. Young: Dudley Young, a literary critic at University of Essex. Young sent Berry an article titled “Life with Lord Lowell at Essex University,” PN Review 28 (1982).
p. 99 Michael Hamburger: a poet, translator, and literary critic.
p. 100 R. Doudna: Roger Doudna, a representative of the Findhorn Foundation and Soil Association. The Soil Association in Edinburgh is the Scottish office of the United Kingdom’s largest organization for the promotion of healthy, sustainable food, organic farming, and land use.
p. 101 My paper’s finished: Gary Snyder, “Wild, Sacred, Good Land,” in The Schumacher Lectures, Volume II, Satish Kumar, ed. (1984); a later version of the essay was published as “Good, Wild, Sacred” in The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 101 the ballad: Snyder enclosed a ballad from a British reader who attended the Schumacher Lectures titled “Upon Hearing Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder Speak at the Schumacher Lectures in Bristol.”
p. 101 Jerry Martien: a bioregional writer and activist from the North Coast of California. He is the author of Pieces in Place (1999), foreword by Gary Snyder, and Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America (1996).
p. 105 a stranger’s letter: Berry enclosed a thoughtful letter written in regard to The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981).
p. 105 British agricultural travels: Wendell Berry, “Irish Journal” (1982), published in Home Economics (1987).
p. 105 the ideogram: Masa Uehara Snyder designed the ideogram for Standing by Words (1983).
p. 108 Drummond Hadley: a poet and rancher from a southwestern ranch bordering Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico.
p. 110 inclusion in the book: Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman, eds. (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984).
p. 111 Gene Logsdon: writer on agriculture, columnist, novelist, and farmer from Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Berry dedicated The Gift of Good Land (1981) to Logsdon.
p. 113 David Orr: a Taoist poet, creek-walker, ideal reader, and inspiring friend. Orr was born in Kentucky in 1942, taught for a number of years at the University of Louisville, spent more than a decade as an inventor and information technology expert, and died in California in 1989.
p. 113 Tom and Ginny Marsh: Wendell Berry wrote an article about Tom and Ginny Marsh titled “An Excellent Homestead” (1979), later published in The Gift of Good Land (1981). Tom was a potter from Borden, Indiana, who taught in the Fine Arts department at the University of Louisville. Ginny is a practicing ceramicist who worked and taught collaboratively with her husband until his death in 1991.
p. 114 Nō plays: an elevated form of Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the fourteenth century. The plays are an expression of shamanistic performance that invoke the spirit realms. Snyder attended several Nō performances while living in Kyoto, Japan, during the 1950s and 1960s. The style of the plays shaped Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).
p. 114 Hawaii bird stamp: This comment concerns the end of Snyder’s previous letter about listening to Hawaiian birdsong in Honolulu. The stamp was of a Hawaiian goose and hibiscus.
p. 115 David Jones: David Jones, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (London: Faber and Faber, 1974).
p. 116 Wes’s book: Wes Jackson, New Roots for Agriculture (San Francisco, CA: Friends of the Earth, 1980).
p. 116 Stone Age Economics: Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (New York: Water de Gruyter, 1972).
p. 119 The Tree of Life: H.J. Massingham, The Tree of Life (London: Chapman and Hall, 1943).
p. 119 “The Old Faith”: in Frank O’Connor, More Stories by Frank O’Connor (New York: Knopf, 1954).
p. 121 I want you to see this: Wendell Berry, “Two Economies” (1983), later published in Home Economics (1987).
p. 124 Morris Graves retrospective: Morris Graves, a painter from the Pacific Northwest and founder of the Northwest School style of painting, noted for its regionalism and mysticism. The mentioned retrospective was “Morris Graves: Vision of the Inner Eye” (1983–1984), organized by the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
p. 124 The Great Transformation: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944).
p. 125 I’m enclosing here a xerox: Luke Breit, “Sharon Dubiago: Psyche Rides the West Coast,” Poet News (January 1984). The enclosed article spoke of a reading with Sharon Dubiago and Wendell Berry at University of Wisconsin. Snyder marked a place in the article where Dubiago states that when she meets Berry for a debate she “is going to talk about ‘Feminism and Ecology,’ which I don’t know a fucking thing about.” The article went on to claim that Snyder declined to participate in a debate with Dubiago, after an invitation allegedly came following an article that Dubiago published about the lack of women poets represented from the San Juan Ridge area titled “Where is the Female on the Bearshit Trail?”
p. 125 Alaska Humanities Forum: Snyder was working as a consultant with Gary Holthaus, Executive Director of the Alaska Humanities Forum. Snyder gave readings in southeastern Alaska and visited numerous villages along the Kobuk River in northwest Alaska.
p. 127 ten years ago: Snyder had attended a previous Wilderness Institute conference titled “The Right to Remain Wild” (1975). His talk “Clouds and Rocks” was published in Right to Remain Wild, a Public Choice: Proceedings of a Conference, November 17–19, 1975 (Missoula, MT: Univ. of Montana Press, 1975).
p. 133 Subsistence equals Sacrament: Snyder wrote about eating as sacrament in “Grace,” an essay published in CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1984), and later included in The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 134 What kind of economy would cherish trees?: This question gets developed in “Conserving Forest Communities,” delivered at the Kentucky Forest Summit (1994) and published in Another Turn of the Crank (1995).
p. 135 Your new poem: in reference to Snyder’s previously enclosed poem, “Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin,” later published in Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).
p. 136 Richard Brothers: an advocate of bioregionalism and sustainable forestry from southern Oregon. Brothers had published an article in In Context titled “Respectful Forestry: Forestry Ecosystems Could Serve Us Generously if We Would Work with Them” (Winter 1984).
p. 137 Driftwood Valley: Theodora C. Stanwell-Fletcher, Driftwood Valley (1946). Berry wrote an introduction for this book in 1989, when it was published as part of the Penguin Nature Classics series, edited by Edward Hoagland. The book was later reprinted by Oregon State Univ. Press in 1999.
p. 138 indeed go to Alaska: Berry was considering working with Snyder for the Alaska Humanities Forum.
p. 138 And here’s the essay: “Preserving Wildness,” published by the Wyoming Outdoor Council (1986), and later in Home Economics (1987).
p. 138 the two fat papers: Richard Sylvan, “A Critique of Deep Ecology,” Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy no. 14 (Department of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National Univ.: Canberra, 1985); Warwick Fox, Approaching Deep Ecology: A Response to Richard Sylvan’s Critique of Deep Ecology (Hobart: Centre for Environmental Studies, Univ. of Tasmania, 1986).
p. 139 Arne Næss: Norwegian philosopher and key thinker in the Deep Ecology movement.
p. 139 Roderick Nash: author of Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1967) and The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
p. 140 Richard Nelson: a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses on indigenous cultures of Alaska; Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983).
p. 140 David Brower: was founder of the Sierra Club Foundation and the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies.
p. 141 Nature and Madness: Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1982).
p. 142 Ursus Arctos: scientific name for the brown bear.
p. 143 Edgar Anderson: an American botanist. His books Introgressive Hybridization (1949) and Plants, Man, and Life (1952) were early contributions to botanical genetics.
p. 143 Deep Ecology: Bill Devall and George Sessions, eds., Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1985).
p. 144 how you live, how you work: Issues pertaining to conservation, environmentalism, agrarianism, and work are addressed in several of Berry’s later essays, including “Conservation is Good Work” (1992) in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (1993), as well as “In Distrust of Movements” (1998) and “The Whole Horse”(1996) in Citizenship Papers (2003).
p. 148 “the human form divine”: William Blake, a line from “The Divine Image” in Songs of Innocence (1789).
p. 148 sexual discipline: These issues are later developed in Berry’s “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community” (1992) and “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity” (1995).
p. 148 Laurens van der Post’s account: Laurens van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).
p. 152 leave for Pennsylvania: Berry was writer-in-residence at Bucknell University in early 1987.
p. 152 wild and cultured: Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 154 Gilbert White’s “hanger”: Gilbert White was an eighteenth century naturalist and author of Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789); the “hanger” is a wood on the side of a steep hill.
p. 154 John and Truda Lane: The Lanes hosted Wendell and Tanya Berry during their stay in Devon. John was an artist and writer, former art editor for Resurgence, and a trustee at Dartington Hall, which, in 1990, became home to Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies. Truda Lane is an artist whose work is published in Life Lines: Selected Drawings of Truda Lane (Resurgence Books, 2010).
p. 154 Temenos: Temenos journal was established by Kathleen Raine, Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble, and Philip Sherrard in 1980. The Temenos Academy, of which Berry is a fellow, was founded in 1990.
p. 155 working very hard on a novel: Wendell Berry, Remembering (1988).
p. 157 The enclosed piece: Gary Snyder, “On the Path, Off the Trail,” in The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 161 Why I Take Good Care: This poem was published in Turn-Around Times (March 1988) and reprinted ten years later in IT Times (January 1998), both student technology magazines at University of California, Davis. In these two publications, the poem was not dedicated to Wendell Berry.
p. 162 the old Camp: a small cabin near Lanes Landing on the Kentucky River. In 1963, after the Camp was flooded several times and fell into neglect, Berry reconstructed the cabin, moving it to higher ground. He tells the story of the Camp in the title essay of The Long-Legged House (1969), and continues to use it as a place for writing.
p. 163 September 16, 1988: Snyder’s note was sent on a poetry postcard of “Pollen” (Gary Snyder V 87), printed by “the unspeakable vision of the individual” (California, PA: 1988).
p. 163 Harlan Hubbard: Wendell Berry, Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work (1990). This material was also delivered through the Blazer Lectures at the University of Kentucky in 1989.
p. 163 three published books: At the time, Harlan Hubbard’s published books included: Shantyboat (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953), Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society (New York: Crowell, 1974), and Harlan Hubbard Journals, 1929–1944, Vincent Kohler and David F. Ward, eds. (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1987). Additional publications now include: Shantyboat Journal (1994) and Payne Hollow (1996), both edited by Don Wallis and published by the Univ. Press of Kentucky, as well as Harlan Hubbard’s Shanty-boat on the Bayous (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1990).
p. 165 a seminar I’m preparing: Snyder enclosed a description for “A Seminar on ‘Issues and Problems in Nature Literature.’”
p. 165 March 7, 1989: Berry enclosed the poem “Sabbaths III (Santa Clara Valley),” published in Sabbaths 1987–90 (Ipswich, UK: Golgonooza Press, 1992) and in This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (2013).
p. 166 “The Etiquette of Freedom”: Gary Snyder, “The Etiquette of Freedom,” in The Practice of the Wild (1990).
p. 167 John Muir’s watery trail: John Muir’s journeys through Alaska (1879–1880, and 1890) are mapped and recorded in John Muir, Travels in Alaska (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1915).
p. 171 A Blue Fire: James Hillman, A Blue Fire: Selected Writings of James Hillman, Thomas Moore, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1989).
p. 173 “Action Packet”: Kai Snyder and Mary Cadenasso, Action Packet: A Directory for Environmental Action (Berkeley, CA: Conservation and Resource Studies Dept., UC Berkeley, 1990).
p. 177 report of sorts: Snyder enclosed a copy of notes concerning travels made during the summer of 1991. These include descriptions of a trip that Snyder and Carole Koda made to Haines, Alaska, and a three-day sea kayak trip made with Richard Nelson of Sitka, Alaska. The second half of the notes is a series of reflections about a mountain-climbing trip in the High Sierra that Snyder made with Carole and Kai.
p. 177 The Discovery of Kentucky: Wendell Berry, The Discovery of Kentucky (1991).
p. 177 watershed group: The Yuba Watershed Institute (est. 1990) is a cooperative management agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Timber Farmers Guild of North America for the joint management of forestland on ten parcels in Nevada County, California.
p. 178 38-year-long poetry project: Gary Snyder, Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996).
p. 179 gathering in San Francisco: Berry was one of forty-six participants engaged in a San Francisco conference called “Megatechnology and Development” (1993). Conference proceedings, including a second meeting in Devon, England, were edited by Stephanie Mills as Turning Away from Technology: A New Vision for the 21st Century (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1997).
p. 181 read on the ridge: Berry enclosed an invitation from Steve Sanfield, asking him to read at North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center on May 27.
p. 182 Drum’s purchase: In 1993, Drum Hadley began a conversation with the Nature Conservancy to manage Gray Ranch, a 502-square mile ranch in southwestern New Mexico that is home to diverse grasslands, as well as unique woodland and riparian communities. In subsequent months, Hadley became a founding director of the Animas Foundation, a private land management organization that purchased the ranch from the Nature Conservancy.
p. 183 KJ: Kyung-jin (Carole Koda’s daughter). Snyder enclosed a poem by her called “Praise Poetry” (January 1993).
p. 183 record of Doobie Av.: DeWayne Williams and Gary Snyder, Dooby Lane: A Testament Inscribed in Stone Tablets by DeWayne Williams (Reno, NV: Black Rock Press, 1996).
p. 183 KJ’s poem tikkled me: Part of KJ’s poem was about tickling, repeatedly spelled as “tikkled.”
p. 183 Menominee in Wisconsin: Berry developed this research in “Conserving Forest Communities” (1994) in Another Turn of the Crank (1995).
p. 184 “Conserving Communities”: Wendell Berry, “Conserving Forest Communities,” later published in Another Turn of the Crank (1995).
p. 184 “Coming Into the Watershed”: Gary Snyder, “Coming Into the Watershed,” also published in A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds (1996).
p. 185 Audubon: Gary Snyder, “Kitkitdizze: A Node in the Net,” later published in A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds (1996). The enclosed copy has a note reading “version of 4. XII. 94 replaces earlier,” followed by “This copy for Wendell — Gary XII. 94.”
p. 185 Tom Lyon: professor of English at Utah State University from 1964–1997, and editor of Western American Literature.
p. 186 Rick Ardinger: coeditor at Limberlost Press.
p. 186 appreciating our collection: Snyder enclosed an enthusiastic letter from Rick Ardinger, who described the collaborative project as an important bioregional primer.
p. 186 Tom Lyon’s foreword: Snyder enclosed a copy of Tom Lyon’s foreword for Three on Community, as well as a letter from Lyon.
p. 187 Charlie Fisher: Wendell Berry, “Trees for My Son and Grandson to Harvest,” later published as “Charlie Fisher” in The Way of Ignorance (2005).
p. 188 Gary Anderson: of Hardin County, Kentucky, owns and operates a small-scale, sustainable logging operation with draft horses. Gary Anderson, Troy Firth, Wendell Berry, and Jason Rutledge spoke on a panel together about the advantages of low-impact horse logging through the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation in Copper Hill, Virginia.
p. 188 “Finding the Space in the Heart”: Gary Snyder, “Finding the Space in the Heart,” in Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996). The poem traverses ridges, canyon edges, and the “playa” of “the long gone Lake Lahontan,” a massive lake of the Pleistocene period that once covered much of northwestern Nevada, including the Black Rock Desert, where Wendell and Tanya had camped with Gary and Carole in 1994.
p. 189 Douglas Haynes: a poet and essayist from Wisconsin.
p. 189 Chincoteague: Chincoteague Island, Virginia.
p. 190 Marion Gilliam: founder of Orion and The Orion Society.
p. 190 I’ll call in a few days: Wendell Berry received the John Hay Award in 1994.
p. 191 account of travels in India: Gary Snyder, Passage through India (1983).
p. 191 I wrote a little essay: Wendell Berry, “Some Interim Thoughts on Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End,” published in the Sewanee Review (Winter 1988) and later in Imagination in Place (2010).
p. 191 The Bird of Light: John Hay, The Bird of Light (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991).
p. 192 W. T. Anderson’s article: Walter Truett Anderson, “There’s No Going Back to Nature,” Mother Jones 21.5 (September–October 1996). Snyder and Berry wrote responses to Anderson’s article that were published together in the subsequent issue of Mother Jones 21.6 (November–December 1996).
p. 195 Allen Ginsberg’s memory: Ginsberg had passed away a few days earlier, on April 5, 1997.
p. 195 Dan Smith: a dairy farmer and poet. His book of poems, Home Land, was published in Human Landscapes: Three Books of Poems (Huron, OH: Bottom Dog Press, 1997).
p. 197 autobiography of Jayber Crow: Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (2000).
p. 201 forestry field day: Berry organized several local forestry events sponsored by the United Citizens Bank and Brown-Forman.
p. 201 Peter Coyote’s book: Peter Coyote, Sleeping Where I Fall (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998).
p. 202 Black Rock Press book: Gary Snyder, Finding the Space (Reno, NV: Black Rock Press, 1996).
p. 202 Carole’s family history: Carole Koda, “Homegrown,” Kyoto Journal 37 (1998), an article of selections from Koda’s book Homegrown: Thirteen Brothers and Sisters, a Century in America (1996). Snyder’s foreword to Koda’s book, titled “Grown in America,” was published in Back on the Fire (2007).
p. 205 Democratic Policy committee: On June 23, 1999, Berry spoke at a meeting of U.S. Senators of the Democratic Party titled “Agriculture Issues and American Farmers.” The intent was to hear testimony from farmers and rural business leaders about the agriculture crisis that was ruining small farms.
p. 206 Jim Dodge: novelist, poet, and professor at Humboldt State University who has also written essays on bioregional thought and practice.
p. 206 “Fire and Grit”: an Orion Society conference held at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
p. 208 Chris: in regard to a letter sent to Chris Schimmoeller, director of Kentucky Heartwood from 1992 to 2002. Heartwood, founded in 1991, is a regional network of community organizations located throughout the Midwest and eastern United States. They are committed to community activism and woodland preservation. The enclosed letter concerned Berry’s unwillingness to support the proposal of a “zero cut” wilderness forestry policy in Kentucky.
p. 210 Dan Daggett: author and conservationist whose book Beyond the Rangeland Conflict: Toward a West That Works (Reno, NV: Univ. of Nevada Press, 1998) profiled ten rancher-conservationist partnerships that demonstrate ways local communities are working to restore sustainable land use.
p. <?> this piece by Larry McMurtry: Larry McMurtry, “Death of the Cowboy,” New York Review of Books 46.17 (November 4, 1999).
p. 211 Eddie Albert: an actor and activist. He delivered a speech titled “Civilization Rests on Topsoil,” later published in The Mother Earth News (May–June 1980).
p. 211 “Grace”: Gary Snyder, “Grace,” in The Gary Snyder Reader (1999).
p. 211 Coomaraswamy: Ananda Coomaraswamy, an English and Ceylonese philosopher and metaphysician, as well as a curator of fine art and a prolific scholar on traditional arts, cultures, and religions.
p. 212 John McLeod: was publicity director at Counterpoint Press.
p. 212 Jack Hicks: professor of English at UC Davis and former director of the Nature and Culture program.
p. 212 Nov. 10 and Nov. 11: in reference to the reading and conversation with Snyder that Berry would give at North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center.
p. 214 odd little piece: Gary Snyder, “Migration/Immigration: Wandering South and North, Erasing Borders, Coming to Live on Turtle Island,” Wild Duck Review (Winter 1998), later published in Back on the Fire (2007).
p. 215 Tanya missed it: Tanya Berry was sick and had to stay in a motel in Nevada City, while Wendell stayed with Carole and Gary at Kitkitdizze.
p. 216 Quivira Coalition: in reference to the Quivira Coalition conference “Grassbanks and the West: Challenges and Opportunities,” Santa Fe, New Mexico (November 2000). The coalition, founded in 1997, is an organization committed to collaboratively restoring ecological, social, and economic health on western lands.
p. 216 Here is a clipping: Carol Feineman, “Pupils Return to Historic North Columbia Schoolhouse,” The Union (November 20, 2000).
p. 217 Sonata at Payne Hollow: Wendell Berry, Sonata at Payne Hollow (Monterey, KY: Larkspur Press, 2001); illustrations for this book were made from woodcuts by Harlan Hubbard.
p. 217 Gray Zeitz: printer and designer of handmade books and broadsides at Larkspur Press.
p. 218 Pound-Fenollosa translations: Certain Noble Plays of Japan: From the Manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa, chosen and finished by Ezra Pound, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats (1916), reprinted by New Directions (1959).
p. 218 “comment”: Michael Lind, “Comment: Our Country and Our Culture,” The Hudson Review (Winter 2002). Berry’s response to Lind’s essay was later published in The Hudson Review 55.1 (Spring 2002), followed by a reply from Michael Lind.
p. 218 heart-breaking account: George Feifer, The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb (1992), and Yanagi Sōetsu, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (1989). Berry consulted these books when writing Hannah Coulter (2004).
p. 219 book on the chicken farms: Thea S. Lowry, Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, America’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000).
p. 220 February 26, 2003: Snyder enclosed the poem “For Philip Zenshin Whalen,” later published in Danger on Peaks (2004). Whalen passed away in 2002.
p. 220 “Citizens’ Response”: Wendell Berry, “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States,” a full-page advertisement placed by Orion in The New York Times (February 9, 2003); later published in Citizenship Papers (2003).
p. 220 San Francisco marches: In January 2003, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people had marched through San Francisco in protest against the Iraq War.
p. 221 The Gift of Gravity: Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity (Old Deerfield, MA: Deerfield Press, 1979).
p. 223 your great piece: Wendell Berry, “Some Notes for the Kerry Campaign, If Wanted,” Orion (2004); later published in The Way of Ignorance (2006).
p. 223 Giuseppe Moretti: a key figure in the Italian bioregional movement. He had arranged for the translation of Snyder’s poetry and articles into Italian.
p. 224 a couple of his writings: Berry enclosed a piece by Giannozzo Pucci titled “The Dream of Florence.”
p. 226 “Man in the Ice”: Ötzi, the “Man in the Ice,” is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who was discovered by hikers in the Ötztal Alps of Austria and Italy in 1991.
p. 227 January 17, 2005: Snyder’s note was sent on a card of Tom Killion’s woodcut print, Piute Canyon and Mt. Humphreys, John Muir Wilderness (1993), distributed by Seabright Press.
p. 227 Daniel Kemmis: Berry and Snyder both responded to letters from Kemmis, author of This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West (2001), a former mayor of Missoula, Montana, and a former Minority Leader and Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives. At the time, Kemmis was considering declaring Democratic Party candidacy for the U.S. Senate election in 2006.
p. 227 my paper for the Koreans: in reference to “Writers and the War Against Nature,” a paper Snyder gave at a conference titled “Writers Making Peace” in Seoul, Korea (2005).
p. 227 letter to Daniel K.: Berry’s letter to Daniel Kemmis was published in The Way of Ignorance (2005), along with Kemmis’s response.
p. 230 Here is a recent poem: Wendell Berry, “VII” (Sabbaths 2005), from Leavings (2010) and in This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (2013).
p. 231 Drum’s book: Drum Hadley, Voice of the Borderlands, foreword by Gary Snyder (Tucson, AZ: Rio Nuevo, 2007).
p. 232 Blessed Are the Peacemakers: in reference to Wendell Berry, Blessed Are the Peacemakers (2005).
p. 232 Carole’s absence: In June of 2006, Carole Koda passed away at Kitkitdizze.
p. 233 The broadside poem: Wendell Berry, “For the Hog Killing,” in A Part (1980) and New Collected Poems (2012).
p. 233 “All our food is souls”: This passage was quoted by Snyder in “Grace,” as published in CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1984).
p. 233 Lennie Brackett’s: a designer and builder of Japanese houses in Nevada City.
p. 234 dpc: David Charlton was handling some typing for Berry from dictation and handwritten drafts, as was his wife, Tanya Charlton.
p. 235 packet of things to read: In a previous letter, Snyder had enclosed several documents, including an article by C. A. Bowers, “Some Thoughts on the Misuse of Our Political Language,” Educational Studies 40.2 (October 2006); an article by Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese history, philosophy, and New Confucianism, who had written about Wendell Berry; and a booklet by Giuseppe Moretti, a key figure in the Italian bioregional movement.
p. 235 Wes’s: The Land Institute; Salina, Kansas.
p. 235 Becky: A reader sent Berry a note about Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville and wanted Berry to tell Snyder about a Blessing of the Animals service. Berry also forwarded a homily sent by the reader titled “Are There Animals in Heaven?” In the margin of the document, Snyder wrote the following comment: “Next: To hope for the non-human world to bless us.”
p. 235 Vandana Shiva: an environmental and economic activist based in Delhi, India.
p. 236 albatross essay: Gary Snyder, “Writers and the War Against Nature,” Resurgence 239 (November–December 2006), later published in Back on the Fire (2007).
p. 236 “I shot the albatross.”: from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798).
p. 236 lecture by S. H. Nasr: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of the Environmental Crisis” (London: Temenos Academy, 1999).
p. 237 reply to the homosexuals: Gary Snyder, “Fires, Floods, and Following the Dao,” in Back on the Fire (2007).
p. 237 Home Place: Stan Rowe, Home Place: Essays on Ecology (1990), revised edition with foreword by Wes Jackson (Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press, 2002).
p. 238 finding new investors: In 2007, Counterpoint Press was reestablished from Washington, D.C., to Berkeley, California, through the merging of three independent presses: Counterpoint, Shoemaker & Hoard, and Soft Skull Press.
p. 239 Tom Killion’s new book: The two books mentioned are Gary Snyder and Tom Killion, Tamalpais Walking: Poetry, History, and Prints (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2009), and Gary Snyder and Tom Killion, The High Sierra of California: Poems and Journals (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2005).
p. 239 a piece on forestry: Wendell Berry, “Better Ways to Manage, Study Robinson Forest,” Lexington Herald-Leader (December 28, 2007), and “Sustainable Forestry: Lessons for Kentucky,” Louisville Courier-Journal (December 29, 2007).
p. 240 Dana Goodyear: a journalist who wrote an article on Gary Snyder and Kitkitdizze titled “Zen Master: Gary Snyder and the Art of Life” for the New Yorker (October 20, 2008).
p. 240 Parinirvana Day: Snyder enclosed an essay titled “Parinirvana, ‘Going on in to Nirvana’ or possibly, ‘Death Beyond Death’ Day,” which provides the cultural significance of this traditional Buddhist day.
p. 243 visit to your place: Berry wrote about this drought in “Life on (and off) Schedule,” an essay about his first visit to Kitkitdizze in 1977.
p. 246 Jefferson Lecture: Wendell Berry, It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays (2012).