The Plowboy Interview
(Page 2 of 18)
SNYDER: I suppose that my concern is due,
at least in part, to growing up in the Pacific Northwest,
north of Seattle, in a rural environment. I was surrounded
by the second-growth forests-maybe third-growth forests-on
the hills back of my father's little stump farm/dairy farm,
and the distant, but not too distant, views of the Cascade
Mountains, Mount Rainier and Mount
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Baker, and the whole range of peaks to the east ...as well
as the white, snowy ranges of the Olympic Mountains across
Puget Sound to the west. That was the world I grew up in,
and I found it exciting and beautiful and wanted to explore
it.
However, exactly why I should have focused more on
learning about the natural world than did a lot of other
kids I knew, is, I suppose, just some kind of karma.
Part of my youthful interest in nature was just due to one
of those imponderable aspects of a person's makeup ...and
another part of it was a result of the opportunities given
to me by the region in which I grew up. At any rate, I took
advantage of the area around me and ventured into it on my
own. I started learning, as-best I could, what was there in
the way of plants and birds, and went out and explored the
area ...staying overnight on my own sometimes in a little
secret camp, cooking for myself, and so forth. And I moved
gradually from that into taking longer and longer trips
into the Cascades and into the Olympics. By the time I was
15, I was beginning to do mountaineering and continued to
do more climbing through adolescence. I climbed all of the
big snow peaks of the West-St. Helens at 15, Hood and Adams
at 16, Rainier and Baker and Stuart at 17, and so forth.
I also became aware of the presence of the Northwest Coast
Indians, seeing them here and there around the area ...down
by the beach, in the public market. The Salish Indians even
used to come by the house, selling smoked salmon.
At any rate, I put a few things together when I was still
in my early teens, and it occurred to me that these were
the people who had always been here. And that these would
be the real teachers, if I truly wanted to learn about the
place, because they were the actual residents. I
mean, you can find a certain amount of information in a
bird book or a flower book, but then there's another level
of understanding that goes much deeper than that: one that
comes from real acquaintance.
I also tried my hand at a few of their skills and crafts
and did a little leather tanning, made moccasins, and made
my own tools. In short, I struggled with self-sufficiency
...and subsistence.
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