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Snyder had also become infatuated with D. T. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism. By day he protected the North Cascades; by night he read Suzuki. A central message of Suzuki’s was, “In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellectuality and lays down a foundation for a new faith.”22 Snyder and his best friend, the poet Philip Whalen, liked to exchange Zen traditional sutras, koans, and sermons by Buddhist teachers. So here was Snyder, working for the Forest Service in Washington state and dreaming about the silent world of places like Alaska and finding inspiration in the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Lankavatara and Surangama sutras. Before Snyder, few poets had considered the western wild places from a Buddhist perspective. Primitive, roadless areas, Snyder now believed, emptied the mind. A desolate peak, to him, became a prayer mat. Sitting cross-legged, he repeated the old mantra, Om mani padme hum, and drank green tea from a handle-less cup.23

It was during this first summer in the North Cascades that Snyder read the Platform Sutra of Huineng. The contemplative Huineng would have made a good member of The Wilderness Society. Born into a minority clan in southern China, he became a Buddhist wanderer, avoiding envious monks, sleeping in caves, and cunningly eluding pursuers. His philosophical reflections became known as prajna wisdom. Snyder took from him the notion that wilderness wasn’t a commodity and that universities weren’t the real places of learning. The North Cascades were Snyder’s college; and enlightenment could be found in a spruce branch, a smooth rock, or a butterfly. Huineng taught awareness of all living things. And the combination of reading Huineng’s meditations and being alone in the North Cascades freed Snyder from money-driven America.

After a few weeks in the cabin at Granite Creek Snyder packed his rucksack with provisions—including brown rice and soy sauce—and headed up Crater Mountain. His work as a lookout was about to commence. He would be watching 3 million acres of measureless mountains. His nickname, given to him by a district manager of the Forest Service, was “the Chinaman.” Snyder wore the appellation as a badge of honor. He carefully studied old-growth conifers, huge stands of Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine stretching high up into the sky. Alaska had taller peaks above the timberline, but in the North Cascades a climber saw 7,000-foot summits jutting up like teeth. Stepping as sure-footedly as a Dall sheep through snow piled up against boulders, Snyder became one with the mountain; the immense void of the North Cascades engulfed him. “Aldo Leopold uses the phrase ‘think like a mountain,’ ” Snyder recalled. “I didn’t hear that until later, but mountain watching is like mountain being or mountain sitting. How do you watch a mountain? Nothing’s going to happen in any time frame that you can consider—except the light changes on it. And so that was my mountain watching.”24

Snyder felt that at the top of any desolate peak, the trail died and a dreamscape began. Summits were the end of the earthly road. Nature was supreme. On top of Crater Mountain, in the clear air, with only his two-way radio to connect him to the world, Snyder served admirably as fire lookout, but he was also filled with thoughts. His visions from Crater Mountain soon became an impetus for the beat generation, a spiritual reawakening based on a nonconformist attitude toward the military-industrial complex of the 1950s. Around this time, David Brower of the Sierra Club and Howard “Zahnie” Zahniser of The Wilderness Society toured the North Cascades, with the photographer Philip Hyde. Together they conceived of the “American Alps” campaign to save the Washington range as a new national park.25

Zahniser had become a legend in The Wilderness Society. While others went on hikes and picnics in the Sierra, he stayed deskbound. An advocate