SOURCE: "The Ecological Vision of Gary Snyder," in Kansas Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring, 1970, pp. 117-24.

In the following excerpt, Lyon considers Snyder's poetry strongly rooted in the ecology of the American West.

The limitations of White/Western thought have also been limned, for serious Western writers, by the presence of the Indian, who lasted long enough in the West to be the model of primitive ecology and religious responsibility to earth. But the critique has not been simple-minded. Frank Waters, to name perhaps the deepest student of the Indian among writers, has long been recommending a supra-rational, supra-emotional synthesis between cultures, making finally an ecologically responsible civilization and psychically whole persons; the Western writer's ability to take the Indian seriously has resulted in real trailbreaking.

It may be—I almost believe it—that the West's great contribution to American culture will be in codifying and directing the natural...