Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

'Poetic Cadence'
by Jamie Clark
Photos by Jamie Clark

The view from Sourdough Mountain inspired Snyder, Kerouac and Whalen's writing.

Gary Snyder stood underneath a beech tree in the Skagit River Valley, surrounded by the large granite walls of the North Cascades. Just before Snyder, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer and former fire lookout, began his poetry reading, Shubert Hunter raised his hand in the crowd. He sheepishly asked if he could present Snyder with a poem he'd written called "Hock Eye."

"I thought, if there ever was a time to present my poem to Gary, now would be it because I knew that after hearing his poems, I wouldn't feel good about mine anymore and I wanted to feel good about it when I read it," Hunter said.
Hunter, a former North Cascades fire lookout, read his poem shyly and quickly.

"After I got done, I looked over at Gary and it looked like his eyes were glossy and he had a smile on his face," Hunter said. "I knew from that he really liked that I wrote it."

Snyder asked Hunter if he could read the poem to the crowd again.
"He slowed it down a bit and added a poetic cadence," said Jeff Muse, adult education coordinator at the North Cascades Institute. "It was really powerful. Shubert had a big smile on his face. He was so proud that a big poet had honored his work."

About 350 people gathered that day, July 27, 2002, to meet a literary legend of the North Cascades. The event, organized by the North Cascades National Park, was called A Lookout's Rendezvous: An Afternoon of Poetry, Storytelling, and Photography with Gary Snyder. Many former fire lookouts, like Hunter, came to listen to Snyder, the writer who gave a voice to the culture of the North Cascades backcountry.

"The feeling I got when I was in the lookout had a lot to do with the poem," Hunter said. "As you go along, you pay attention to Mother Nature. Little things about Mother Nature will give you a treat - the sound, the scenery, cloud formations, birds ... I just expressed my feelings the best way I knew how."

The view from Sourdough Mountain and its surrounding peaks in the North Cascades not only inspired Hunter's poem, but also the writings of Snyder and two other former lookouts: Jack Kerouac and Philip Whalen.

In the 1950s, all three men sat alone on mountaintops, in small glass lookout towers watching for fires, and writing. Snyder, Kerouac and Whalen eventually became published writers and an influential part of a literary era called the Beat Generation. Almost 50 years later, Snyder, the last surviving of these writers, returned to the region for the first time since 1953 to attend the Lookout's Rendezvous.

Snyder did most of his writing in the early 1952 and 1953 on a mountain surrounded by glacier-covered peaks. From his lookout station, he could stare down at one of the deepest gorges in North America, the Skagit Valley.

"Every lookout who has been on Sourdough (Mountain) and has seen the view has heard Snyder's poem running through their head," said Maxine Franklin, a lookout in the 1970s and again in the 1990s.

Snyder's writings reflect on the culture of the North Cascades backcountry. Every trail crew is familiar with his work and his poems have something that backcountry people relate to, Franklin said.

"Snyder's writing focuses a lot on the relationship of people to wild places," Muse said. "He doesn't write about thoughts, he writes about experience."

At the Lookout's Rendezvous, Snyder, Franklin and Hunter joined Gerry Cook, Harold Vail and Jack Francis on a panel of storytellers, Muse said. All the former lookouts told stories and discussed their experiences in the mountains.

Cook, a lookout in the early 1970s, said since lookouts are by nature solitary people, the fact that they all came together was a special thing.

"When you are a lookout, it's almost like you are part of a fraternity," Cook said. "There's this unsaid camaraderie."

Franklin said Snyder spent his days in the same towers and took in the same views as the other lookouts. Since the lookouts shared similar experiences, Snyder's writing had added meaning for them.

"When I was laying in bed in the lookout, I always thought 'wow, this is the same bed that Snyder laid in,'" Franklin said.

The North Cascades haven't changed much since the last time Snyder was in the region. It remains one of the few untouched, wild places left in the lower 48 states, Cook said.

"I was very impressed by Gary's impression of the Skagit when he came here," he said. "He was taken with how much had stayed the same and how beautiful it was."
Snyder's time as a lookout in the North Cascades was brief, but his writing captured the essence of the North Cascades in such a way that it has connected people to this region ever since.

"Everyone who loves the wild should get to know Gary Snyder," Muse said. "It's enriching, it's part of the backcountry culture. You can read the books and go hike around on the same trails that Snyder, Kerouac and Whalen did.

"Snyder's writing is timeless. It's just as right now as it was then."

Sophomore Jamie Clark studies photography and environmental journalism at Huxley College. This is her first published piece.

Fall 2002 - The North Cascades

'Poetic Cadence' by Jamie Clark Photos by Jamie Clark

'Poetic Cadence'
by Jamie Clark
Photos by Jamie Clark