Gary Snyder’s Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry has left an undeniable mark not only on eco-activists and artists but also on everyday individuals looking for a deeper connection with the natural world. Both Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems and The Practice of the Wild, the California Book Club selections for this month, evoke a sense of wonder that allows readers to contemplate the impact of their day-to-day actions and the possibility of living in a more harmonious union with nature.
In Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, the final line of the poem “Water” is “Eyes open aching from the cold and faced a trout.” Snyder places the speaker as an equal with regard to not only the fish but nature as a whole. And because we owe as much to nature as we have received from it, the need to shift toward a greener future is absolutely necessary if we are to have any guarantee of a future. These four documentaries share some of Snyder’s environmentalist themes.
The Human Element (2018)
From filmmaker Matthew Testa comes The Human Element, which spotlights humans as a fifth element wreaking havoc on the other four. Longtime photographer James Balog takes viewers on a yearlong journey across the nation, finding families and individuals whose lives have been affected by climate change. Audiences meet a family in Denver battling asthma and an entire fishing town in Virginia that is at risk of being submerged owing to rising sea levels.
Balog shares the reality of how climate change plays out in the life of an average working American in an easy-to-understand fashion. Similarly, in his poetry, Snyder works to shed light on issues of global warming by using simple language and uncomplicated stanzas—one of the biggest appeals of his writing.
2040 (2019)
This hybrid documentary takes an unconventional approach to showcasing solutions to climate change. Director Damon Gameau provides information by addressing his four-year-old daughter in a kind of image-based letter. Using expert opinions and interviews with those out in the field, Gameau offers a glimpse of what 2040 might look like if the best green practices right now are put into practice worldwide. He shares our current attempts at climate mitigation and picks out some of the most viable options, such as rooftop solar panels, green spaces, and regenerative agriculture.
Extinction: The Facts (2020)
The guarantee of a future is brought into question by David Attenborough as he narrates Extinction: The Facts. The film explores the one million species at the brink of extinction and how humans will fare if this mass extinction occurs. In the documentary, Attenborough examines the ways this extinction will affect everyone, from a lack of water security to loss of plant growth. One of the key reasons the extinction rate is now 100 times higher than in previous years, according to research from UC Berkeley, is the human element mentioned in Testa’s film, which causes deforestation, pollution, and overfishing.
Artifishal (2019)
Overfishing and the fish population are central topics in our last recommended documentary, Patagonia’s Artifishal. Director Josh Murphy examines current wild fish populations as well as their slide closer to extinction owing to overfishing and ecosystem changes. To combat this catastrophe, some hatcheries and fish farms were built to breed their own, but this led to even more detrimental effects on both the fish and the natural environment.
Throughout the documentary, Murphy looks at how government agencies failed to properly address the cause of declining fish populations—they filled the rivers with more fish rather than fixing their habitat and allowing them to naturally repopulate.•
Join us on May 16 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when an array of panelists and CBC host John Freeman, with an appearance by Snyder, will gather to discuss Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems and The Practice of the Wild. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
