And so it went. After spending all day on the extensive first interview, we spent the rest of the shoot filming at one location during the morning and at another in the afternoon. The weather gods were with us. With the exception of one somewhat cloudy and blustery day when we filmed the ridge walk, it was all sunshine and glistening green vistas. The crew was wonderful, displaying a professional dedication to getting things right regardless of the hour or distance to the location. We had the great luxury of working with three cameras, and that required significant preparation each time we changed setups. But it proved to be a good system. The last thing I wanted was to have to ask either Gary or Jim to repeat what they had just said for need of a different camera angle.
Of course, by the time we got to the last day, the whole company was up to speed, in synch, and working like a Swiss watch. This is always a cause for some frustration on short shoots. The last thing we got with Gary and Jim present was the dinner scene that precluded an official wrap-party dinner. On the following day many crew members started heading home. But the department heads and our extra camera operators remained, and it was on this final day that sound went out to record nature and the camera crew went hunting for beauty shots on the ranch. Some of the best material we got and that made it into the final cut was captured during those last hours.
“Directing” a documentary is not the same as directing a fiction-based narrative film with actors pretending to be other people. In the latter case, the director’s main job is to make sure the performances ring true. In the case of a documentary film, you want your main subjects to be as comfortable and true to themselves as possible—you want to do all you can to urge them along without getting in their way. Later, in the editing studio, you get to see all that you have, and it is there the film begins to take shape.
The two men we see in this film are national treasures, as singular and talented and American as they come. It was a privilege to get to know them, to be trusted by them, and to be able to do all I could to render a final product worthy of them.
Of animals—free agents, each with its own endowments, living within natural systems.
Of plants—self-propagating, self-maintaining, flourishing in accord with innate qualities.
Of land—a place where the original and potential vegetation and fauna are intact and in full interaction and the landforms are entirely the result of nonhuman forces. Pristine.
Of foodcrops—food supplies made available and sustainable by the natural excess and exuberance of wild plants in their growth and in the production of quantities of fruit or seeds.
Of societies—societies whose order has grown from within and is maintained by the force of consensus and custom rather than explicit legislation. Primary cultures, which consider themselves the original and eternal inhabitants of their territory. Societies which resist economic and political domination by civilization. Societies whose economic system is in a close and sustainable relation to the local ecosystem.
Of individuals—following local custom, style, and etiquette without concern for the standards of the metropolis or nearest trading post. Unintimidated, self-reliant, independent. “Proud and free.”
Of behavior—fiercely resisting any oppression, confinement, or exploitation. Far-out, outrageous, “bad,” admirable.
Of behavior—artless, free, spontaneous, unconditioned. Expressive, physical, openly sexual, ecstatic.
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, “The Etiquette of Freedom”
PART ONE
Working Landscapes
Trans-Species Erotics
Going out—fasting—singing alone—talking across the species boundaries—praying—giving thanks—coming back.
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, “Survival and Sacrament”
JIM HARRISON: The bishop of Lyon in the eighth century determined that animals couldn’t go to heaven, because they didn’t contribute to the church—which is ghastly, although at the same time they all decided that hell was a place without birds.
GARY SNYDER: Speaking of birds, you said you went to the Platte River sometimes to watch the sandhill cranes.
JH: Oh sure, and I’ve seen them dance in these great open areas in Northern Michigan, and they start that dance, it’s totally heraldic—
GS: Flutter up, come down, flutter up.—There are Korean folk dances that copy that. They call them crane dances.
JH: It’s a small-god thing: poetry’s very much involved with the spirits of our imagined deities, which have such a natural place—
GS : Small and drab, even.
GS: There’s a stupa—a big round dome cenotaph memorializing the Buddha—in the city of Katmandu, just on the outskirts. These are found here and there all over East Asia, with a kind of round, soft dome and then a spiral on top, and a railing all around it. People always walk clockwise, sun-wise, circumambulating these stupas, reciting little mantras, and it’s all very good for your karma to do that. And these are herders and peasants and lamas and ordinary people going around it, with little candles and oil lamps going twenty-four hours, and lots of horses and yaks being led around as well. Because the view is that there are not too many spiritual exercises that animals can do that will really work for them. But circumambulating stupas is one of them. And so their owners take them around to improve their karma.
JH: The culture that introduced empathy and compassion: that might be what distinguishes us from the nonhuman, but not totally—because I’ve noticed that, when a dog in a dog family dies, the other animals in the family are really quite distraught and uncomfortable and they keep looking around for the other animal for about a month or so. And then they let go. Do they feel the acute loss that humans do?
My dog Zilpha was distraught this afternoon. I’m not sure why. She was trying to communicate. Now, is that language or an expression of feeling?
GS: We don’t know.
JH: Zilpha’s brave enough to be a bit of a coward. She once saw a big male javelina, which are dangerous animals to dogs, and she looked up at me and looked at the javelina and started to bristle up, pretending she’s going to chase it, but she’s just running in place—she hasn’t moved an inch. It’s really like, “Let me have him! Hold me back!” Very comic, huh?
GS: I love being at that point when I write poems.
JH: Are poems themselves expressions of wildness? Because it seems a poem is an example almost of measured chaos.
GS: You raise the most difficult question of all right there, which is, what is the nature of art in relationship to the wild? It’s interesting and complicated.
JH: I think of that extraordinary Shakespeare quote, “We are nature too.”
GS: Which is true. But what you have to go after is, what is it that is not