Honoring the haiku sensibility, I look for what would be the seasonal signals, kigo, in our Mediterranean middle-elevation Sierra mountain landscape. What xeric aromatic herbs and flowers, what birds, what weather signals, will we find? They are different from Japan. I read translations of the myths and tales of the Native people who once lived where I live now, from the Nisenan language (which is no longer spoken) and I can see how much they valued the magic of the woodpecker, the sly character of fox, and the trickster coyote. High-flying migratory sandhill cranes pass north and south in the spring and in the fall directly over my house. They have been doing this for at least a million years.
The Euro-, African-, and Asian-Americans are just a little more than 200 years on the west coast of North America, and it will be several centuries yet before our poetic vocabulary matches the land. The haiku tradition gives us the pointers that we need to begin this process ...
Gary Snyder
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