Milton's Paradise Revisited (But not Regained)

While reading Muir's account on his thousand mile walk, I found it interesting that one of his few belongings in his satchel was Paradise Lost. Additionally, Gary Snyder composed a poem on reading Paradise Lost from a mountaintop in California. How is it that two naturalists bring an epic poem on the fall of man and lost paradise while they trek through the wilderness? Snyder obviously takes a tongue and cheek approach to the poem by pointing out that the Garden will outlive fallen man (Myths and Texts), but why would they chose a poem specifically about man rather than nature? (Instead of something like Wordsworth)

Consider the opening of Paradise Lost:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death upon the world, and all our woe.

Here, man's first disobedience--his fall--is that he takes the fruit from a tree that he is forbidden to take from. Thus, he takes the seeds and potentiality for the tree to grow from the tree and in stealing from a tree, he brings the problem of death and suffering unto man. In this sense, it could be interpreted that man's dominion over nature denies his place in Paradise.

The thesis to Paradise Lost is as follows:

What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Milton's point in writing Paradise Lost is to make sense of the suffering and death in the world. i.e. to help others understand why Paradise has been lost. (And if Paradise is lost because Satan (representation of dominion) convinces Eve to steal an apple that isn't hers, this says a lot about man's attempt to overpower the natural world)

And, to jump ahead, after Adam and Eve join hands and walk away from the Garden, we can turn to Milton's poem Paradise Regained in which Jesus regains Paradise for men by denying Satan and his dominion.

In all honesty, this is not how I read Paradise Lost. It's one of my favorite poems because it allows us to understand and even like Satan, making sense of why people do terrible things and helping us to better reconcile injustice. Reinterpretating Genesis to teach stewardship over dominion, however, is a worthwhile art in adapting our culture to a more ecological consciousness.