[He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village] is Gary Snyder's senior thesis done at Reed College, from which he was graduated in 1951 with a dual major in anthropology and English. It is, in a way, a model of all his subsequent work, because it attempts to lead through literature—in this case, a "Swan Maiden" myth among the Haida tribe—to the living roots of cultural practice and psychology. By itself, it is an impressive study, bringing the theories of Graves, Freud, Jung, Campbell, Eliot, and I. A. Richards, among others, to bear upon the Haida. What Snyder is trying to show is that this people was a rooted people, enmeshed in a complex, wild ecology in which animals were tremendously significant, and at the same time a regardful people, self-conscious and artistic to an extraordinarily high degree. (p. 61)

In 1951, Snyder had penetrated to the human meaning of a myth—perhaps helped or motivated by certain personal considerations, which he mentions at the close of his "Foreword." He had "lived into" another time and place, another cultural mind.

The "Foreword" is also interesting because, in almost throwaway fashion, Snyder presents the essence of his (and all) poetic practice.

To go beyond and become what—a seagull on a reef? Why not. Our nature is no particular nature; look out across the beach at the gulls. For an empty moment while their soar and cry enters your heart like sunshaft through water, you are that, totally. We do this every day.

And so did the Haida. What is remarkable is that a "green would-be scholar in Oregon," as Snyder describes his twenty or twenty-one year old self, should have seen into that heart of the matter so clearly. (pp. 61-2)