First of all, I'd like to get myself off of Sourdough Mountain," Gary Snyder said, "so I'll read this little poem that I left in the lookout on a card pinned to the wall, when I left the lookout for the last time in late August of 1953. I've never been back to that country since."

Poem Left in Sourdough Mountain Lookout

I the poet Gary Snyder
Stayed six weeks in fifty-three
On this ridge and on this rock
& saw what every Lookout sees,
Saw these mountains shift about
& end up on the ocean floor
Saw the wind and waters break
The branchéd deer, the Eagle's eye,
and when pray tell, shall Lookouts die?

Snyder offered this poem from his second year on the lookouts - a poem "about being alone."

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup,
Looking down for miles
Through high, still air.