Wild
The Practice of the Wild is a book by the great American poet Gary Snyder. I started reading it yesterday and instantly knew I was loving it. This one is prose, not poetry, but what an eloquent and wise man Gary Snyder is.
The Chinese spoke of the “four dignities” – Standing,Chanel Handbags, Lying, Sitting, and Walking. They are “dignities” in that they are ways of being fully ourselves, at home in our bodies, in their fundamental modes. I think many of us wold consider it quite marvelous if we could set out on foot again, with a little inn or a clean camp available every ten or so miles and no threat from traffic, to travel across a large landscape – all of China, all of Europe. That’s the way to see the world: in our own bodies.
Thoreau says “give me a wilderness no civilization can endure.” That’s not difficult to find. It is harder to imagine a civilization that wilderness can endure, yet this is just what we must try to do. Wildness is not just the “preservation of the world,” it is the world.
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