Snyder was born in San Francisco but grew up in the Northwest, learning about nature and life in cow pastures and second-growth forests. He earned his B.A. in anthropology at Reed College in Portland and spent some time at other universities, learning Asian languages and literatures. During the 1950s, Snyder became a part of the Beat Movement in San Francisco along with such noted figures as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. While there he supported himself by working at a variety of odd jobs before leaving to study Zen Buddhism in Japan where he remained for nearly a decade.

Best known as a Pulitzer-prize-winning poet (for Turtle Island, 1974; No Nature, 1992), Snyder is also an elegant essayist whose collections include The Practice of the Wild (1990). Snyder is often described as the ecological poet, producing...