High Peak Haikus

from: Campbell, James. "High Peak Haikus," Guardian Unlimited, 16 July 2005.

"Snyder is at pains to distinguish his way of life from 'a back-to-the-land, counter-cultural, utopian image of living outside of society. That's all right if you're going to just go like Thoreau did for a year, and you can walk over to Emerson's for dinner. But this is more like what the farm and the ranch in the west is, where people live at a distance, with a certain amount of genuine sustainable skill, though for the time being our life depends on machinery - chainsaws, generators, grass-cutters and so forth. Now, when I first came up here I didn't have any of that, and there may come a time again when I don't have it. And so there are other strategies, too.' Kai emphasises his father's attachment to 'doing things in the old ways, using tools that are made locally, things that are made with an intimate understanding of the place where you live. It's about being rooted in a place, and also understanding that the world is changing very fast and that technologies may only be a transitory crutch, a substitute for a deeper understanding of how to live in a place.' "