social concerns. Both speak to causesrnthat Snyder—in the familiar personae ofrnwalker and hitchhiker, forester and trailrnworker, anarchist evangelist and sometimernZen monk—has made his own in arndistinguished body of work, most famouslyrnhis 1974 book Turf/els/and. Bothrnforge an aesthetic of wildness findingrnbeauty in landscapes, many of them remoternfrom us in space and time.rnAt the heart of the two books lies arnsort of cosmic ecology based on ideas ofrnbioregionalism, on environmentalist andrnBuddhist notions of interconncctedness.rnThe unity of all things is a given to ecologists,rnwho are used to talking aboutrnsuch matters as rock cycles and foodrnchains, and Snyder does not add muchrnto the discussion of a point that is nowrnvery near to received wisdom. But onrnbioregionalism Snyder, as often before,rnhas much to say. He echoes the 19thcenturyrnWestern explorer John WesleyrnPowell, who urged that the federal governmentrndivide the lands beyond thernMississippi along the region’s watershedsrnin which “cities and dams,” as Snyderrnsays in one essay, “are ephemeral and ofrnno more account than a boulder thatrnfalls in the river.” Cities and dams havernbeen far more significant than that in thernhistory of the West, but Snyder dismissesrnthem as temporary aberrations, and herngoes on to propose an ecologically basedrnpolitics in which places like Arizona, California,rnand Wyoming would give way tornSonoran, Sierran, and Wind Riverrnecosystems governed by freeholders onrnthe land.rnIf this seems Utopian, Snyder does notrnmind, and in any event human concernsrnare for him secondary to the larger claimsrnof nature. The best essays in A Place inrnSpace and the most compelling lines inrnMountains and Rivers Without End arernsimple evocations of ponderosa pinerntrees and highland rivulets, of coyotesrnand cougars, celebrations of the nonhumanrnworld. And even at that, Snyderrnmanages to find beauty in unexpectedrnplaces, as in “the calligraphy of lights onrnthe night / freeways of Los Angeles.”rnA long-standing theme of Snyder’s isrnthe need to take a long view of history, asrnhe proposes in his lyrical poem “OldrnWoodrat’s Stinky House.” In that poem,rnSnyder observes that human spoken languagesrnendure for only about 500 yearsrn(Middle English to Elizabethan; Elizabethanrnto Modern English), the life spanrnof a Douglas fir. Such an understandingrnof the way things work, Snyder suggests.rngrants trees—and mountains, andrnrivers—a new importance that will, hernhopes aloud in several essays, be reflectedrnin a new economics. (“Long-rangernself-interest would realize . . . that deforestationrntoday does not create jobs forrnthe future.”) Eor the present, Snyder arguesrnthat the loss of biological complexity,rndiversity, and stability that accompaniesrneconomic development is a farrngreater threat than mere pollution, orrneven overpopulation. Here he soundsrnless like John Wesley Powell than AldornLeopold and, by turns, Edward Abbey.rnFashionable jeremiads on such mattersrn—Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature,rnfor one—have made the best-sellerrnlists, but Snyder does not trade inrnalarmism. He is instead guardedly optimistic,rnnoting that “the possibility of saving,rnrestoring, and wisely using the bountyrnof wild nature is still with us in NorthrnAmerica.” His long view extends to thernfuture as well as to the past; indeed, it isrnsurprising to see in essays written in thern1960’s how prescient Snyder was in anticipatingrnthe “technology of communication,rneducation, and quiet transportation”rnthat now drives the nascentrnInformation Age, and in predicting thatrnenvironmental issues would be of centralrnimportance to end-of-the-eentury localrnand national politics.rnAt several points in A Place in SpacernSnyder returns to another favorite subject:rnthe close study of places in the landscapernin order to understand how theyrnwork and thus make a real home. “Therernare specific things to be learned,” hernwrites, “from each bird, plant, and animalrn—a natural system is a total educationrn—and this learning is moral, as wellrnas being useful for survival. The redtailedrnhawk teaches us to have a broadrnview of things, while not missing the stirringrnof a single mouse.”rnAs in the work of Robinson Jeffers, inrnSnyder’s eyes hawks—and mountains,rnand rivers—are what matter in the longrnview. Human beings do not often turnrnup in these pages, where Snyder is usuallyrntoo busy talking about cosmic affairsrn—”inhumanism”—to deal muchrnwith living, breathing people. Whenrnthese do appear, however, they are oftenrnmemorable. One of the best momentsrnin A Place in Space is Snyder’s affectionaternportrait of the Japanese Buddhistrnpoet and farmer Nanao Sakaki, who,rnamong other things, has spent morerntime wandering around the deserts ofrnArizona and California than have mostrnAmericans. When a prominent traditionalrnBuddhist priest boasted to Sakakirnof his spiritual genealogy, Sakaki countered,rn”I need no lineage; I am desertrnrat.” For wanderers like Sakaki who seekrnto be equally at home in the worid thatrnlies beyond the city, Snyder’s books arernuseful, if idealistic, guides.rnGregory McNamee’s most recent book isrnA Desert Bestiary, published by ]ohnsonrnBooks in Boulder, Colorado.rnWhen the BhndrnStudy Artrnby Thomas FlemingrnMusic and Musicians inrnAncient Greecernby Warren D. AndersonrnIthaca: Cornell University Press;rn248 pp., $35.00rnDesmond Dupre (for many years thernlutanist of the Deller Consort)rnused to say that the lute was to the 17thrncentury what the harpsichord was to thern18th century, the spinet to the 19th, andrnthe gramophone to our own age. Americansrnlisten to music (or the syntheticrnequivalent) all day long, but few of usrnplay our own music, and if we do, it is eitherrnbecause we hope to make a livingrnsome day playing thrash guitar on stringsrnpre-tuned to an E chord, or because wernhave bound our children to a Japaneserncult-leader named Suzuki.rnWhat music meant to the Greeks, werncan scarcely conceive of it, even those ofrnus who in the course of a day are forcedrnto endure the sound of the Beatles fromrnthe girls’ room. Nine Inch Nails from thernboys’, a Clementi sonatina from the pianornin the living room, and, from thernkitchen radio, DJs Bob and Bill quarrelingrnover the imagined merits of GaryrnGrafman’s mechanical performance ofrnProkofiev’s 3rd piano concerto.rnFor the Greeks, Mousike (sc. techne)rnwas the art presided over bv the Muses,rnand although the term might be appliedrnbroadly enough to signify what somernpeople mean by “the arts,” it was morerntypically restricted to the preeminentrnAPRIL 1997/37rnrnrn