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Jan-Maat's Reviews > The Snow Leopard
The Snow Leopard
by
by
Jan-Maat's review
bookshelves: 20th-century, travel, non-fiction, buddhism, autobiography-memoir
Aug 14, 2022
bookshelves: 20th-century, travel, non-fiction, buddhism, autobiography-memoir
Content warnings:
* unacknowledged CIA involvement
* historic drug taking
* current drug taking
* high altitudes
* death
* mourning
* mysticism
* Buddhism
* dysentery
* enclosed spaces
* open spaces
* explicit scenes of copulation
* Yeti
* improper faecal deposition (with thanks to comment #3)
the above list is not exhaustive, but hopefully gives fair warning of the kinds of content likely to be encountered within the pages of this memoir.
This is a Holy grail story, but as you remember from the story of Parzifal, you don't just have to know what question to ask, you also have to know that you are meant to ask a question.
Author Peter Matthiessen, following on from the death of his wife Deborah Love (D in the text throughout) from cancer after a stormy relationship, seizes the opportunity to join George Schaller (GS throughout the book) on an expedition through the Himalayas to observe the breeding season of the bharal - the Himalayan blue sheep, to determine if they are sheep or goats.
Matthiessen was introduced to zen Buddhism by his wife, during the process of her death he had several experiences that he understood as being near Enlightenment experiences and in pursuit of these he went with Schaller imagining that the mountain environment and difficulties of the journey might push him into a permanent state of Enlightenment. From another point of view, he is attempting to cope with his grief.
The account follows a diary format, and in places he mentions writing a diary, but presumably the text we read is at least somewhat polished and refined - I would be surprised if many people write endnotes to their diary entries particularly when snuggling into their sleeping bag after a long day walking at high attitude.
He comments on the degradation of the environment that he sees - trees felled for firewood causing soil erosion for instance and I wondered if he had read the 1972 " Limits to Growth" or CIA reports based upon it, or if his vision of the Nepali countryside was coloured by his mourning face - but of course it needn't be either or, it could be both. His is a refreshingly bleak vision this is not a land ripe for adventurous tourists, but one moving ever closer to environmental catastrophe.
Up in the mountains there are beautiful lyrical passages (perhaps I need to add purple passages to my list of content warnings) describing what he saw. I wondered if these were affected by the thin air or his drugs regime or his desire to experience the profound despite his Buddhist teacher warned him to expect nothing.
What I am coming round to saying is that part of the charm of the book are the vulnerabilities of the author a man who abandoned a fairly young son to go half way round the world to keep another man company while he tries to watch goat-sheep having sex - which they are not keen to do.
There is a ghastly amateurishness to the expedition, money given to sherpas for them to buy boots is not spent on boots, they can't hire porters for the entire duration of the trip - I might hope that today someone might attempt the simpler solution of training someone who already lived in the area to observe the bharal rather than trying to organise a dozen and a half Nepalis plus the occasional animal to transport two non-Nepalis plus food, firewood and kit for all involved to a remote plateau. Matthiessen is so focused on being observant that he fails to notice on the return, GS remains to watch the bharal mating (or not) for longer, that one of the two sherpas going with him has dysentery.
But there is a disarming directness and honesty to Matthiessen's account, he tells us that his relationship with his wife was bad, until he really realises that she is going to die, he tells us about his restless travels and drug taking, he tells us that his boots are not broken in before the journey, he tells us of his longing for inner peace just as in the next paragraph he will talk about how angry he is, indeed how angry he was even before his wife died.
He does not tell us about his time in the CIA, which I suspect allowed him to live a life of travel and drug taking. There is something special in how his earnest Buddhism tangles together with his mysticism, his longings, his mountain experiences, the snow leopard - more elusive than enlightenment, how he fixates on one of the sherpas regarding him as enlightened as as the potential teacher who appears when the student is ready.
But was the student ready?
Ready or not it makes for a delicate book of vicarious travel.
* unacknowledged CIA involvement
* historic drug taking
* current drug taking
* high altitudes
* death
* mourning
* mysticism
* Buddhism
* dysentery
* enclosed spaces
* open spaces
* explicit scenes of copulation
* Yeti
* improper faecal deposition (with thanks to comment #3)
the above list is not exhaustive, but hopefully gives fair warning of the kinds of content likely to be encountered within the pages of this memoir.
This is a Holy grail story, but as you remember from the story of Parzifal, you don't just have to know what question to ask, you also have to know that you are meant to ask a question.
Author Peter Matthiessen, following on from the death of his wife Deborah Love (D in the text throughout) from cancer after a stormy relationship, seizes the opportunity to join George Schaller (GS throughout the book) on an expedition through the Himalayas to observe the breeding season of the bharal - the Himalayan blue sheep, to determine if they are sheep or goats.
Matthiessen was introduced to zen Buddhism by his wife, during the process of her death he had several experiences that he understood as being near Enlightenment experiences and in pursuit of these he went with Schaller imagining that the mountain environment and difficulties of the journey might push him into a permanent state of Enlightenment. From another point of view, he is attempting to cope with his grief.
The account follows a diary format, and in places he mentions writing a diary, but presumably the text we read is at least somewhat polished and refined - I would be surprised if many people write endnotes to their diary entries particularly when snuggling into their sleeping bag after a long day walking at high attitude.
He comments on the degradation of the environment that he sees - trees felled for firewood causing soil erosion for instance and I wondered if he had read the 1972 " Limits to Growth" or CIA reports based upon it, or if his vision of the Nepali countryside was coloured by his mourning face - but of course it needn't be either or, it could be both. His is a refreshingly bleak vision this is not a land ripe for adventurous tourists, but one moving ever closer to environmental catastrophe.
Up in the mountains there are beautiful lyrical passages (perhaps I need to add purple passages to my list of content warnings) describing what he saw. I wondered if these were affected by the thin air or his drugs regime or his desire to experience the profound despite his Buddhist teacher warned him to expect nothing.
What I am coming round to saying is that part of the charm of the book are the vulnerabilities of the author a man who abandoned a fairly young son to go half way round the world to keep another man company while he tries to watch goat-sheep having sex - which they are not keen to do.
There is a ghastly amateurishness to the expedition, money given to sherpas for them to buy boots is not spent on boots, they can't hire porters for the entire duration of the trip - I might hope that today someone might attempt the simpler solution of training someone who already lived in the area to observe the bharal rather than trying to organise a dozen and a half Nepalis plus the occasional animal to transport two non-Nepalis plus food, firewood and kit for all involved to a remote plateau. Matthiessen is so focused on being observant that he fails to notice on the return, GS remains to watch the bharal mating (or not) for longer, that one of the two sherpas going with him has dysentery.
But there is a disarming directness and honesty to Matthiessen's account, he tells us that his relationship with his wife was bad, until he really realises that she is going to die, he tells us about his restless travels and drug taking, he tells us that his boots are not broken in before the journey, he tells us of his longing for inner peace just as in the next paragraph he will talk about how angry he is, indeed how angry he was even before his wife died.
He does not tell us about his time in the CIA, which I suspect allowed him to live a life of travel and drug taking. There is something special in how his earnest Buddhism tangles together with his mysticism, his longings, his mountain experiences, the snow leopard - more elusive than enlightenment, how he fixates on one of the sherpas regarding him as enlightened as as the potential teacher who appears when the student is ready.
But was the student ready?
Ready or not it makes for a delicate book of vicarious travel.
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Reading Progress
July 30, 2022
–
Started Reading
July 30, 2022
– Shelved
July 31, 2022
–
15.38%
"But when I came upon these cautionary words, I already had what Kierkegaard called ' the sickness of infinitude', wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I was embarked upon a search, & scarcely a clue as to what I might be after."
page
48
August 1, 2022
–
16.99%
"This wilderness will certainly be gone by the century's end. Already as the valley widens signs of slash and burn appear and rockslides caused by destruction of the forests block the river with huge fallen trees."
page
53
August 1, 2022
–
20.83%
"We have outsmarted ourselves like greedy monkeys, & now we are full of dread."
page
65
August 2, 2022
–
29.81%
"When one pays attention to the present, there is great pleasure in awareness of small things"
page
93
August 3, 2022
–
33.01%
"Where the Saure plunges into its ravine, a sheer & awesome wall writhes with weird patterns of snow & shadow. The emptiness & silence of snow mountains quickly bring about the states of consciousness that occur in the mind-emptying of meditation, & no doubt high altitude has an effect, for my eye perceives the world as fixed or fluid, as it wishes. The earth twitches, & the mountains shimmer"
page
103
August 3, 2022
–
35.9%
"In the clearness of this Himalyan air, mountains draw near & in such splendour, years come quietly to my eyes & cool on my sunburnt cheeks. This is not mere soft-mindedness nor am I all that silly with altitude...still all this feeling is astonishing : not so long ago I could say truthfully that I had not she'd a year in 20 years."
page
112
August 4, 2022
–
37.5%
"But Tatakot is the capital of Tichu-Rong, & from the police house comes flat run music from a small radio with weak batteries the girst such noise we heard heard since late september.' A note of the 20th century in the 17th ' GS sighs, as sorry as myself that we have heard it."
page
117
August 4, 2022
–
38.78%
"The Nepal government takes yeti seriously, & there is a strict law against killing them."
page
121
August 4, 2022
–
39.1%
"It is not so much that we are going back in time as that time seems circular, & past & future have lost meaning, I understand much better now Einstein's remark that the only real time is that of the observer, who carries with him his own time & space. In these mountains, we have fallen behind history."
page
122
August 4, 2022
–
50.96%
"At the snowfielfs depot there is nothing but snow and silencewind and blue. I rest in the warm sun, envelopes in the soft shroud of white emptiness; my presence in such emptiness seems noticed although no one is here."
page
159
August 5, 2022
–
51.28%
"These two hands I see before me in the sun, bracing the basket straps, hands square & Brown & wrinkled with the scars of life, are no different from the old hands of my father. Simultaneously, I am myself, the child I was, the old man I will be."
page
160
August 7, 2022
–
60.26%
""Tukten, as is the sherpa habit, sold his boots after his last expedition & started this one barefoot""
page
188
August 8, 2022
–
65.06%
"'There ought to be a leopard scat out on that next point -it's just the sort of place they chose'. & there it is, all but glowing in the path, right beneath the prayer stones of the Stupa - the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus, I think, unaccountably, & nod at my friend, impressed. 'Isn't that something?' GS says, 'to be so delighted with a pile of crap?'"
page
203
August 9, 2022
–
66.99%
"More than one bharal is snorting in alarm, & in seconds the band is off again at a scattering gallop on the gravel, leaving me dumbfounded, for I am well hidden & I have not stirred.
Perhaps I underestimate my smell."
page
209
Perhaps I underestimate my smell."
August 10, 2022
–
72.76%
"I find a place to meditate, out of the wind, a hollow on the ridge, where snow has melted. My brain soon clears in the cold mountain air, & I feel better. Wind, blowing grasses, sun: the dying grass, the notes of southbound birds in the mountain sky are no more fleeting than the rock itself, no more so & no less - all is the same. The mountain withdraws into its stillness, my body dissolves into the sunlight..."
page
227
August 10, 2022
–
75.0%
"I climb to my old lookout, happy & sad in the dim instinct that these mountains are my home. But 'only the Awakened Ones remember their many births & deaths',& I can hear no whisperings of other lives."
page
234
August 10, 2022
–
78.53%
"With passing centuries the rain clouds from the south will no longer come; the soil is poor the growing season brief & even the old slow caravan trade in salt & wool to the south side of the Himalaya is dying as cheaper supplies from India spread north
Eventually this town may be abandoned to the desert like the old cities of western Tibet."
page
245
Eventually this town may be abandoned to the desert like the old cities of western Tibet."
August 14, 2022
–
81.73%
"Wind has blown some snow from the steep faces, & black wing shapes of exposed rock fly on the whiteness. The sky gleams, & the rigid peaks resound. The beauty of the Nambo Pass opens the mind for it is a true portal of the Himalaya where the traveller passes from one world to another."
page
255
August 14, 2022
–
83.01%
"Far behind me & below in the wastes where I have come from my companions are black specks upon the snow. Still breathing hard I listen to the wind in my own breath, the ringing silence, the snow fire & soaring rocks the relentless tappeting of prayer flags, worn diaphanous, that cast wind pictures to the northern blue."
page
259
August 14, 2022
–
83.33%
"A little past midnight, effortlessly, D died .
I left the hospitaljust before daybreak. It was snowing. Walking through the silent streets I remembered D's beloved Zen expression: "no snowflake ever falls in the wrong place." Even in this grim winter dawn evwrything was as it should be, the snowflakes were falling without effort, all was calm and clear."
page
260
I left the hospitaljust before daybreak. It was snowing. Walking through the silent streets I remembered D's beloved Zen expression: "no snowflake ever falls in the wrong place." Even in this grim winter dawn evwrything was as it should be, the snowflakes were falling without effort, all was calm and clear."
August 14, 2022
–
83.97%
"This morning I find a great round rock split clean as an Apple & in the split as on an alter a stone orb has come to rest places so strikingly by elements & cataclysm that it's perfection stops me in my tracks in awe of the wild murdrous & splendid power of the world."
page
262
August 14, 2022
–
87.18%
"The path I had followed breathlessly has faded among stones in spiritual ambition, I have neglected my children & done myself harm,& there is no way back. Not bad anything changed I am still beset by the same old lusts & ego & emotions, The endless nagging details & irritations that aching gap between what I know & what I am."
page
272
August 14, 2022
–
87.82%
"As I walk along my stage striking the ground I leave the tragic sense of things behind; I begin to smile infused with a sense of my own foolishness with an acceptance of the failures of this journey as well as of its wonders, acceptance of all that I might meet upon my path. I know that this transcendence will be fleeting but while it lasts I spring along the path as if set free"
page
274
August 14, 2022
–
89.1%
"This is the last Buddhist village we shall see & even here The faith is dying out; the prayer walls are ancient,& no one has added a new stone in many years. For this is the Kali Yuga the Dark Age when all the great faiths of mankind are on the wane."
page
278
August 15, 2022
–
Finished Reading
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Ilse
(last edited Aug 18, 2022 05:44AM)
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Aug 18, 2022 05:15AM
The content warnings made me wonder if this was the memoir of a masochist. Does the book include a map of the journey? In which part(s) of Nepal was the expedition? Thank you for penning this thoughtful and thought-provoking review!
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Ilse wrote: "The content warnings made me wonder if this was the memoir of a machochist. Does the book include a map of the journey? In which part(s) of Nepal was the expedition? Thank you for penning this thou..."there are two maps, they are mostly dark grey to show where the mountains are, they are north-west of Katmandu in inner Dolpo.
I’m not sure about how you’d word it, but an additional content warning might be added regarding the day he takes a crap in the corner of the hut where he’s staying because it’s too cold to go outside…just about the worst thing you could ever do in Nepal!I read this book and loved it thirty years ago right before I went to go live in Nepal for a couple of years. I’m not sure it really prepared me for the journey, but the beauty of the Himals described here is real and not a result of altitude or drugs!
Petergiaquinta wrote: "I’m not sure about how you’d word it, but an additional content warning might be added regarding the day he takes a crap in the corner of the hut where he’s staying because it’s too cold to go outs..."ah yes, a funny scene - maybe improper faecal deposition? I will add to the list of warnings!
Indeed almost the perfect crime - using a dung heap as a toilet, just unfortunate that the author did not take into account the different appearances of human and yak manure.
Hahaha…perfect!
Interesting book Jan-Maat. I loved your list of warnings - you never know what people find a trigger nowadays:-)
Anna wrote: "Interesting book Jan-Maat. I loved your list of warnings - you never know what people find a trigger nowadays:-)"thanks, I saw in some reviews that people linked it apart from, for instance, the mysticism, so I thought I'd throw up a list of things that might put different readers off to give a fair warning - and it's a kind of mini-review too!
Thesnowleopard wrote: "How silly."thank you!
Is there a good source for what his role in the CIA was?
