Snyder's grandfather was an I.W.W. organizer, and the "Wobblies" motto--"forming the new society within the shell of the old"--has always appealed to Snyder as the appropriate strategy for revolution because the emphasis is less on destroying outworn or unjust social institutions than on replacing them with something more worthwhile. Snyder also embodies the frontier spirit that for over a hundred years caused restless Americans to be drawn to the freedom of the Western territories rather than confront the social and psychological constraints of the urbanizing East. Snyder might be considered as the last of an old breed or the beginning of a new breed of backwoodsmen figures in American literature. And, if we consider westward movement the central theme of American history, it is not so surprising that this backwoodsman continued west; he is a Buddhist whose influence on the Beat movement was in large measure exercised from the back country of the Far West and a monastery in Japan. During the warm months of 1952, 1953, 1954, and 1955, Snyder was employed variously as a fire lookout on Crater Mountain and on Sourdough Mountain in Washington State, as a choker at Camp A of the Warm Springs Lumber Company, and as a Trail Crew worker at Yosemite National Park.
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