In 1969, California poet Gary Snyder published a collection of poems and essays entitled Turtle Island. Snyder explained this unusual title in the introduction:

"Turtle Island – the old/new name for the continent, based on many creation myths of the people who have been living here for millennia, and reapplied by some of them to "North America" in recent years. Also, an idea found world-wide, of the earth, or cosmos even, sustained by a great turtle or serpent-of-eternity." (Snyder, 1969, Turtle Island)

Snyder relays one such myth belonging to the Nisenan and Maidu, indigenous people who lived on the east side of the Sacramento Valley. According to Snyder, the story goes something like this:

Coyote and Earthmaker were blowing around in the swirl of things. Coyote finally had enough of this aimlessness and said "Earthmaker, find us a world!" Earthmaker tried to get out of it, tried to excuse himself, because he knew that a world can only mean trouble. But Coyote nagged him into trying. So leaning over the surface of the vast waters, Earthmaker called up Turtle. After a long time Turtle surfaced, and Earthmaker said "Turtle, can you get me a bit of mud? Coyote wants a world." "A world" said Turtle, "Why bother. Oh well." And down she dived. She went down and down and down, to the bottom of the sea. She took a great gob of mud, and started swimming toward the surface. As she spiraled and paddled upward, the streaming water washed the mud form the sides of her mouth, from the back of her mouth—and by the time she reached the surface (the trip took six years) nothing was left but one grain of dirt between the tips of her beak. "That’ll be enough!" said Earthmaker, taking it in his hands and giving it a pat like a tortilla. Suddenly Coyote and Earthmaker were standing on a piece of ground as big as a tarp. Then Earthmaker stamped his feet, and they were standing on a flat wide plain of mud. The ocean was gone. The stood on the land. (Snyder, 1995, Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, Sessions, ed.)

Turtle Island then is North America. Not present day North America, but the continent of the past, and of the future. When Snyder looked at modern man’s relationship to the earth, he felt it lacked a spiritual connection once common among Native Americans, and among eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism. For example, Peter Mathiessen quotes Jimmy Durnam, a Cherokee:

We cannot separate our place on earth from our lives on the earth nor from our vision nor our meaning as a people. We are taught from childhood that the animals and even the trees and plants that we share a place with are our brothers and our sisters. (McLaughlin, 1993, Regarding Nature, Industrialism and Deep Ecology)

Snyder himself wrote:

Buddhist teachings go on to say that the true source of compassion and ethical behavior is paradoxically none other than one’s own realization of the insubstantial and ephemeral nature of everything. Much of animism and paganism celebrate the actual, in its inevitable pain and death, and offer no utopian hopes. Add to this contemporary ecosystem theory, and environmental history, and you get a sense of what’s at work. One recent philosophical outcome is "Deep Ecology" which informs the work of the Wild Lands Project [sic], among others. (Snyder, 1995, Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, Sessions, ed.)

For Snyder then, Turtle Island became symbolic of his own "back to the future" sentiment of how man’s relationship to the earth should be defined, and lived. It should be biocentric (nature centered) as opposed to anthropocentric (human centered), while possessing a keen awareness of "place". The concept of place is difficult at first, but think of somewhere special to you. Perhaps it is a forest. Perhaps it is the house you grew up in, your school, or your church. Now imagine expanding that feeling to cover the entire biosphere. Once you appreciate the place where you are, Snyder thinks, you begin to treat life and the earth with reverence and respect, not to be exploited, as modern man has come to do. Therefore Snyder urges a reinhabitation of Turtle Island, and a new paradigm for mankind.

Do we all want to go back/forward to Turtle Island? What will like be like? Will we be happier? Healthier? These are fair questions to ask. To answer them, we must know more. For Snyder, Turtle Island became symbolic of the cultural and ecological rediscovery of North America, but for others Turtle Island has become the icon for the reinvention of North America: the Wildlands Project.