Letter from Emmett Grogan to Gary Snyder, postmarked 25 May 1967 from El Rito, New Mexico

[Located in the Gary Snyder Papers at the University of California at Davis, Shields Library, Special Collections, Accession Number: D-50. Box 58, Folder 56. Note: spelling errors are in original.]

This morning I shot a snowshoe with the sun coming up over the hill. An old Spanish sheep rancher came by on a horse and Natural Susan gave him coffee and we talked. 

He didn't like the wind -- cost him too much money for grain. He killed off all the turkies a few years ago with poison grain -- now they're all back. Leases the land from National Forest Bureau to graze his herd. How many, 2000 or more. Set beartraps all over the place -- caught a giant last fall. Taxidermist wants $150 to do the head and skin into a rug. Too much! Sells horses to rich workers in Los Alamos, where lots of mystery goes on all the time and never makes the papers. 

The skin came off like a glove this time split it. Hung it stretched on a dead tree today. Sure feels nice. 

Came to New Mexico after spending a day at Mahalila [?] House. Larry Bird dropped me in the mountains where Natural Susan and I pitched the tent Dick Brautigan gave us and cook salt pork lots of coffee and rabbit/turkey stews. Will stay here alone -- unknowing till mid-June. First time I broke silence with outside world in three weeks. Ginsberg stayed in El Rito for a week. Larry and I went with him to U. of N Mex for a reading good crowd -- lots of football players ready to mix with the fag longhairs -- someone almost beat up Julius but Peter shoved him away. I read some of Kirby Doyle's poems -- they liked Ode to John Garfield the best. 

Blacks plan summer-roving street gangs -- Roi Jones is in town as well as every other hung-up black artist. Spoke with Jones awhile on a plane once asked if he remembers grabbing Peter O's cock in '59 -- He told me the future was a long time gone. / Also big Solstice celebration in Golden Gate (all through) on 21-22 June. Muhammed Ali said he'll come -- and all the people and no stage -- (diggers are niggers). A lot of us will move to Hunters Point this fall. As for me -- every time I tinks I fall asleep. 

Happy prickly pussy crablice of eternity 

Grogan.