Gary Snyder uses his poem Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout to engage the reader both in the view he sees and his thoughts as he is sitting in his watchtower. The view is what the poet is seeing as he looks over Sourdough Mountain watching for forest fires. day after day. His words, “valley”, “fir-cones”, “rocks and meadows” (Snyder 724), in the first stanza are all descriptive words letting the reader know what the view is from where he is sitting. The first stanza also lets the reader know what he is looking for, smoke from a fire. His words, “a smoke haze”, “glows” and “swarms of flies” (Snyder 724) are things that the poet may have thought at first glance were the starting of a fire. The second stanza removes the reader from the