COLD MOUNTAIN

Cold Mountain is a house – begins a poem of freedom and liberation. This Cold Mountain series subscribe to this idea that the natural world is home to everyone. Though Cold Mountain is said to be a “house,” this poem describes a home. A house “without beams or walls” is the world. There are no limitations to this house. There are no ceilings, but only the sky. The line “at the center of nothing” develops a scenery of vast and open nature, a field maybe. This Cold Mountain is the world, a home. But not only is this home to Gary Snyder, but to me and everyone else as well. Cold Mountain is the natural world to be specific, unaffected by the pollution of urban life.

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain – is a poem that intensifies the previous, “Cold Mountain is a house.” Adding to the idea that Cold Mountain is mother earth, this poem shows that Cold Mountain is everywhere. One can only get to Cold Mountain when they realize that they are already there. When Gary Snyder says, “my heart’s not the same as yours,” he is saying that his understanding and love of nature are distinct and different from others, and that his appreciation separates himself from others. “You’d get it and be right here” confirms my theory on Cold Mountain that once one realizes it, he has been in Cold Mountain this whole time. In conclusion, Gary Snyder highly regards nature as his