Above Pate Valley - Gary Snyder

 

https://youtu.be/8KdWPvdBdu0

 Gary Snyder (b:1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer and environmental activist.  Snyder is a winner of Pulitzer Prize for poetry and is described as ‘The Poet laureate of Deep ecology’.  As a young man, he spent his summers laying traits in the Sierras, Yosemite, where he began writing his first poems and published.  Yosemite, that includes Pate valley, is a National park in 3027 sq.km that was established in 1890.  This area is said to be occupied 10,000 years ago by the ancestors of Awahnechee tribes.  After the Mariposa war in 1851, the tribes were removed from there.  Yosemite is blessed with incredible rock formations like El Capitan, the world’s tallest granite monolith along with 3000 years old Sequoia trees and the likes. 

In the poem ‘Above Pate Valley’, that is taken from Snyder’s debut Riprap, Snyder describes his working on a trail crew in the mountains. Here, he talks abut the incredible rock formations, the fertility of soil, the magic of animals and his finding an obsidian arrow head flake.  He also talks about the profound insights that he derived from them and its making him realize the archaic values of Earth and his connection with nature. 

The poet and other members in the crew completed the last section of the trail by noon, on the ridge that was 2000 feet above the creek.  Then they began to walk through the Pine groves and reached a green meadow. Though the sun was blazing there, the  air was cool.  There they sat and ate cold fried trouts.  Then the poet found an obsidian, a flake volcanic glass from the ground.  On their moving through the bear grass, they found a lot of flakes, arrow heads.  They might have been used by the tribes, who lived there in the previous centuries, in their weapons and arrows.  Actually, that part of the land was said to be the land of fat summer deers.  By using their trails, they even visited the poets camp too. The poet and the likes with the help of drill, pick, single jack and dynamite made their trails and reached that place.  Similarly, the tribes are said to be reached there ten thousand years ago, through the trails that they had made then.  In this way the Pate valley and Sierra Nevada mountains have been remaining there from the time immemorial and still allow others to invade. 

Thus the poem highlights the grandeur and immensity of nature, the continuity and interconnectedness of human existence with the natural world.  Snyder’s skillful use of imagery that creates a sensory experience in the minds of the readers helps to explore the themes of time, human existence and the interconnectedness of all things. 

-----Thulasidharan V