I had an amazing weekend and one of the many highlights was getting to meet Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder is a poet who literally changed my life, especially from his book, I believe maybe his first, “The Back Country”. I was into Buddhism and reading the Beats and this book just knocked me down. Ever since he has been a certain standard and guideline for how I live my life, that is, hopefully: full of integrity, open to adventure, adamant about the experience of solitude and nature… well what it boils down to is just… aware, open eyed, real.

So I got to accompany Laura Brown, a reporter for The Union in Grass Valley on an interview. He was fantastic, amiable, and favoritely for me, down to earth. He didn’t seem to want to talk about ethereal things so much as he wanted to discuss “The Real Work”, of forestry, wildlife corridors, millions of years of geology.

So for my life this was truly a wildest wish fulfilled, to have him make me a cup of coffee, and to be sitting across the table from me talking about the San Juan Ridge and the Yuba River.