"The Practice of the Wild" Trailer

'The Practice of the Wild' is a film profile of the poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder. Snyder has been a creative force in all the major cultural changes that have created the modern world. Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he was a central figure of the Beat generation. He helped bring Zen Buddhism into the America scene, was an active participant in the anti-war movement and an inspiration for the quest for human potential. All along he was a founding intellect, essayist and leader of the new environmental awareness that supports legislation and preservation without losing sight of direct wild experience -- local people, animals, plants, watersheds and food sources.

This film, borrowing its name from one of Snyder's most eloquent non-fiction books, revolves around a life-long conversation between Snyder and his fellow poet and novelist Jim Harrison. These two old friends and venerated men of American letters converse while taking a wilderness trek along the central California coast in an area that has been untouched for centuries. They debate the pros and cons of everything from Google to Zen koans. The discussions are punctuated by archival materials and commentaries from Snyder friends, observers, and intimates who take us through the 'Beat' years, the years of Zen study in Japan up to the present -- where Snyder continues to be a powerful spokesperson for ecological sanity and bio-regionalism.


From Chuck Jaffee: ‘The Practice of the Wild' — Upcoming film showing

What's the big deal about Gary Snyder? You may as well ask what's the big deal about trees, rocks, streams, and birds.

The word “appreciation” comes to mind when thinking about one of the most iconic residents of Nevada County. The poet, essayist, and activist intones a “pledge of allegiance,” in his book “Turtle Island.” He refers to “one ecosystem / in diversity / under the sun / with joyful interpenetration for all.” When he speaks “For the Children,” also in that Pulitzer Prize winning book, he flows to the words “learn the flowers / go light.”

The film “The Practice of the Wild” builds around a conversation with Gary Snyder. The documentary includes some poetry reading by Snyder as well as enough biography to weave an appreciation for this appreciater of our shared world.

Snyder's celebrity has endured since his initial prominence in the “Beat” era of the 1950s with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Much more than his celebrity, more than decades of published work, Snyder might prefer being appreciated for continuing, at age 80, to do hard physical work.

“The Practice of the Wild” is a low-key, casual hour. It addresses a range of ideas, though it never travels far from the Zen sensibilities that Snyder helped enliven in the United States. Hear what the Zen knife cuts. Hear what Snyder thinks about reincarnation. Hear how he refers to nature, to simplicity, to thinking (and learning) locally.


From 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival

“The wild requires that we learn the terrain, nod to all the plants and animals and birds, ford the streams and cross the ridges, and tell a good story when we get back home.” So writes legendary Beat poet Gary Snyder in his influential 1990 collection from which this celebratory documentary takes its name and finds its restoring rhythms of nature, image and word. Occupying a hallowed yet humble position within the realms of poetry, academia, ecological activism and spiritual practice, Snyder has distinguished himself among peers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac by becoming both a countercultural hero and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Director John J. Healey skillfully intertwines the many fascinating aspects of Snyder’s journey through nature and across the page, sagely pairing the poet with his cantankerous compadre and fellow scribe Jim Harrison. Together, the two old friends roam the verdant hills of the central California coast, musing eloquently and with hard-won wisdom and earthy humor on Bay Area bohemia, Zen Buddhism and the morally charged interdependence of all living things. Whether reminiscing about a camping trip with Kerouac, recalling the writing of his seminal Turtle Island or being held by his ankles and dangled over a cliff in Japan as a test of truth-telling, Snyder is a warm and captivating presence. “Life in the wild is not just eating berries in the sunlight,” the poet tells us, and true to his ageless inquisitiveness, The Practice of the Wild seeks out and finds so much more.

—Steven Jenkins