If there's still humans alive in 2 or 3 hundred years, I think Gary Snyder will be looked upon as the 20th century's greatest nature poet...first came across him in, of course, Kerouac's "Dharma Bums"...fuck did he ever influence my little life after that: the next summer holidays, still 16 years old, I scored a job in the local Forest Service...measuring trees for fuck's sake...walking for perhaps an hour through Gwavas State forest to a place where we would measure 100 trees, up & down & girthwise...then trudge off to the next plot...total immersion in nature...weekends would sometimes stay in one of the fire towers...even more fun...talk about "remote access".
  About the same time I saved up cash to buy US $s, sent an order to Mr. Ferlinghetti's City Light Books in San Francisco, & received a beerbox of Beat literature about 10 weeks later.."Pictures of the Gone World" a broadsheet of Kerouac's pome "Rimbaud", facsimile of Ginsberg's "Planet News"...all stunning...but, most importantly Gary Snyder's "Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems" a volume that has informed my poetical sensibility ever since.
  Now, after all these years, I'm still a great fan of the guy...lately scored a copy of the Gary Snyder Reader along with  the Snyder/Ginsberg Selected Letters... also found Snyder's "Passage through India" in my local Library ...& my admiration continues to surge. Tat tvam asi, dudes