Gary Snyder is one of very unique modern poets in that his work blends ecological concern and precise observations of nature with inner insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism. Equipped with his ecological/ Zen Buddhistic imagination, he explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. Snyder’s deep involvement with Zen Buddhism has been important to his poetry along with his ecological practice in his life such as living along the Yuba River in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Although he studied ecological philosophy and Buddhistic ideas deeply, as a poet he distrusted metaphysics and abstract ideas. Thus his environmentalism focussed in what he calls “riprap of things,” And the symbol of “riprap” is in some ways similar to the Zen “koan” which helps one to pass the path from temporal life to the moment of Enlightenment. Snyder’s poetic style, drawn from his involvement with ecological and Zen Buddhistic imagination, has created a new kind of poetry that is concrete, direct and accessible. His work will be remembered in its own right as the example of a new direction taken in American literature, as the warning against modern pollution and ecological destruction, and as the literary proposal to respect the all living things to preserve endangered natural world.