Kneeling in the snow, Nick and I examine the tracks, seemingly consistently left–right–left, each with the thumb-like print, and some prints a lot sharper.
‘Do you see any evidence of any track of overprinting by hind feet coming down on top of fore?’ I ask, looking at Nick.
Tracks move from the left side of the ridge to the right as they go up the hill, then to the centre, back to the right. As we follow them up the ridge, sinking into the snow, it seems the maker, apparently passing earlier that morning, walked on top of the snow without sinking. The animal somehow also sensed where branches were below the snow, branches that kept it from sinking through, using these branches like in-place snowshoes. Every so often a foot falls through.
Most tracks are less than an inch deep. Puzzling black dirt in some tracks is probably bark off the branches above. Tracks under trees are sharper than those in the open. My watch says 4:22. We spent eight hours climbing and now two hours up here; there are a couple hours of daylight left to race back to the camp. Tomorrow we’ll see how these tracks have changed. A trail has broken open now to the ridge.
three
The Bear Mystery
3.1 The Gorge into the Yeti’s Jungle
Source: Author
‘Papa, what are we going to do?’ Jesse asks, finishing a breakfast of rice cooked in milk. ‘It’s raining. I’m cold.’ He and I stand under the plastic tarp by the cook fire. Jennifer’s gone high with Nick today to check the tracks. Off our elbows drips the now-familiar Barun drizzle.
Back in the tent we read Winnie-the-Pooh, discussing the challenges of searching for honey, wondering if anything else might hide in the ‘hundred-acre wood’. A break in the rain gives time to leave the tent and search ‘for Owl’s house’—Jesse reminding me that we heard an owl last night. Outside, we build Heffalump traps in our wet thicket, doing that makes us numb, so we go back in the tent to hang the laundry where body heat may slowly dry it. Then, to the woods again and we rig a climbing rope from a branch which lets us pirouette tree-to-tree in an imagined Yeti style.
Nature’s most-tested classroom has come alive. Where interest leads and surprise lands opens opportunities for father–son lessons—they are caught not taught in questions that opened in his mind. We search under rotting logs, take apart a tree cavity for beetles, and develop our taxonomy: beetles with horns, beetles that look blue, beetles with pincers that hurt, beetles with wings allowing them to fly away. Life is discovered.
‘They’re almost melted, Dan’l,’ Jennifer says as she and Nick return. And setting down his pack Nick adds, ‘Even our tracks from yesterday. If our tracks melted so, then for the tracks to be as sharp as they were yesterday, they must have been made only hours before.’
‘It was good to see your tracks, but really much wasn’t there.’ Jennifer looks up from the stool on to which she plopped, taking the mug of sweet tea and two Fig Newtons offered by Pasang. ‘The nicest part was catching the mood of that high jungle. But your tracks aren’t convincing.’
I turn to Nick. ‘How long before us yesterday do you think the tracks were made? It would be about the same as for Shipton who also came in the afternoon.’
‘It’s amazing, Dan’l, how fast tracks melt. The tracks we saw were sharp, the toes clear. Now they’re snow bowls despite no sun today. The only prior aspect still sensed was right–left bipedalism. Tracks when we found them had to be fresh, but if they were that fresh how did the bark flakes fall in so quickly. That “something” must have been shaking branches as it walked.’
Holding Jesse, Jennifer says, ‘We followed the trail up the ridge until it dropped off into the bamboo. While following, I stepped on a branch on top of the snow, a branch the animal had also stepped on. The branch bent under my 110 pounds. When Nick stepped on it, the branch cracked, actually splintered. He’s 150 pounds, maybe 170 with his pack.’
‘So this beast is less than 170 pounds,’ Nick says with pride. ‘We started looking at other branches. We found a branch that crossed the path. A four-legged animal should be able to walk under, but a two-legged animal would find the branch blocking its path. So how did our animal go? There were no marks in the snow of four feet, so it doesn’t seem to have dropped to all fours. But on the back of the branch was a scratch, a scratch in the moss on the top seeming to suggest the animal swung under.’
‘They were scratches like those on the bamboo on the cliff,’ adds Jennifer.
That night soft flakes of snow started, no ting-ting as with rain, or click-click like dry snow. Awakening, I realized the tent walls were pressed down and might collapse the poles. Going out to scoop snow from the walls, night opened; in a world where sight was turned off, sound and smell gave the jungle fullness, a valley the king had called ‘the wildest in my country’. Here, surrounded by the highest of mountains was a true wild, a place more wild than the 4,000-times-visited Everest summit just miles away. Might it be that people who go into such wilds are discovering the Yeti in themselves?
PIGLET, TOO, HAD TO BRUSH AWAY SNOW, Jesse and I discussed the next morning. And as Piglet was doing that, he looked up and there was Winnie-the-Pooh walking round and round, thinking of something else. And when Piglet called, Pooh went on walking.
‘Hallo!’ said Piglet, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Hunting,’ said Pooh.
‘Hunting what?’
‘Tracking something,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
‘Tracking what?’ said Piglet, coming closer.
‘That’s just what I ask myself. I ask myself, “What?”’
‘What do you think you’ll answer?’
‘I shall have to wait until I catch up with it,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh. ‘Now, look there.’ He pointed to the ground in front of him. ‘What do you see there?’
‘Tracks,’ said Piglet. ‘Paw marks.’ He gave a little squeak of excitement. ‘Oh, Pooh! Do you think it’s a-a-a Woozle?’
‘It may be,’ said Pooh. ‘Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. You never can tell with paw marks.’
With these few words he went on tracking, and Piglet, after watching him for a minute or two, ran after him. Winnie-the-Pooh had come to a sudden stop and was bending over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Piglet.
‘It’s a very funny thing,’ said Bear, ‘but those seem to be two animals now. This—whatever it is—and the two of them are now proceeding in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they turn out to be Hostile Animals?’
NICK AND I LEAVE THE CAMP THE NEXT DAY in different directions. Returning that evening, neither of us has discovered much. Animals are not moving with the new snow, and back in the camp we discover we’ve lost the possibility of dry camp slippers as the day’s melt has created slush that swamps over slipper tops. The next day more snow falls, so we cannot ascend to the ridge. It’s easy to justify taking a day off. Towards noon the snow turns to a drizzle, and in the evening back to wet snow.
3.2 Our Camp in Makalu Jungli Hot’l
Source: Author
Suddenly shouts come up the slope. It is Bob! Lendoop and Lhakpa bring him in. Huddling together under the plastic tarp with mugs of hot tea, Bob probes, ‘Did you see nail marks in the snow? Are you sure? Then how did you find nail marks on the bamboo, on the cliff, even on the branch? Are you suggesting it’s an animal which can have nails out while on cliffs and holding branches, and like a cat draws them in while walking—if so, they are claws not nails. More importantly, it’s not a primate, certainly not a hominoid, or even a bear or panda.’
Dampening my earlier certitude now are questions. Eight years older than me, for my jungle-learning Bob Fleming was a mentor. As a four-year-old, I tagged along as he went out with his gun and brought home bird specimens. Aside from knowing animals and plants, he’s also mastered several Himalayan languages.
Bob goes on, ‘Why are you sure there are no hind-foot overprints? Did you take enough photographs
? From your description, you were more than exhausted. What? You found the long-sought tracks and didn’t use a whole roll of film—then back that up using another full roll in case something was wrong with the first roll? And, dismiss the idea of the animal shaking branches and bark falling in the steps—wind did that, you’re on a Himalayan ridge. What real evidence do you have that the route showed intentional selection for branches under the snow? Did you photograph that? What the Yeti has always lacked is evidence, not hypotheses.’
‘Bob, we have mysterious footprints—they fit in size with Cronin and McNeely’s, also Tombazi’s.’
‘And again,’ Bob replies, his voice holding genuine curiosity, ‘we do not have any evidence beyond the footprints as to what made these mysteries.’
The next morning begins our sixth day in the camp. Freezing rain leaves a film of ice on rocks and a crust that with every step breaks to slush beneath. Bob looks for a project to sustain his optimism, and, practical as always, suggests that the probability of breaking legs will lower if exploration is done by talking. So we retreat into the large tent as he questions Myang, Lendoop, and Lhakpa.
He starts by joking with the three about animal sex life. Bear with goat—what would that make? Monkey with rat? The jokes give a list of jungle animals, similar to mine of almost two weeks ago at the confluence, but with three new ones, the wild dog and both species of civets. Bob slips in oblique references to the Shockpa, passing a snippet from one account he’d heard with a piece from another village.
Then Lendoop replied, ‘I am many times in the jungle as a hunter. How can there be such an animal? I never see its sign in the jungle. What does it eat? How does it move? I have heard shockpa stories from people but I never see any signs myself.’
Bob casually asks, ‘Lendoop, if not the shockpa, what did Dan’l and Nick find on the ridge?’
‘I didn’t see the tracks. Maybe rukh balu.’
‘Rukh balu?’ Bob queries offhandedly.
‘There are two bears in this jungle. One is bhui balu. It is black, strong, very aggressive, and when dead requires five men to carry out. The other is rukh balu. It is also black, but moves in trees like a monkey, and this bear is shy. Two men can carry a dead tree bear.’
Bob speaks carefully, ‘One bear lives on the ground, another bear in the trees, different sizes, living in different places. One aggressive, one is shy. Are there other ways they differ?’
‘It is strange,’ Lendoop answers. ‘The front paw of the rukh balu is like the human hand. I think the two sahibs saw that in the snow. A tree bear can hold things with the thumb on one side and other claws on the other side.’ Lendoop shows with his hands an opposable grip between the thumb and fingers.
Bob and I are quiet. A bear in a tree with a forepaw that makes prints like a human hand. Searchers have been looking on the ground because footprints on the ground defined the beast—while the animal that may make those prints probably was seen many times, but in trees far away to not be recognized as different but so close in resemblance that its identity is mistaken. A small black bear—rukh balu—shyly hiding in trees while explorers and scientists pass underneath. If they saw the little bear they would count it as a cub of Selenarctos thibetanus, a known species on their taxonomical list. They were looking for a man, an Abominable Snowman.
3.3 Bob (extreme right) Interviewing the Team in the Tent
Source: Author
Lendoop goes on. ‘We see the rukh balu when it comes to our fields to eat corn at the end of summer. In Shyakshila I have a skull of the animal I killed five months ago.’
Lhakpa breaks in, saying that in his grain room is a tree bear skull along with its dried front paw and back paw. He keeps them to scare away mice and evil spirits.
WE SIT BY THE COOK FIRE. What do the villagers believe the Yeti to be? Those sitting beside us do not know the Yeti as ‘Yeti’; they do not even use the name that is nearly universal throughout Nepal of bun manchi, ‘forest man’ (but they are aware of the name as Lendoop showed when explaining the footprint in the stone). Their mysterious jungle men are the Shockpa and the po gamo, as evidenced by the mountain’s name while entering the Barun Valley.
The po gamo appears to be a spirit that takes a physical form. It attacks people at night who walk a trail, frightens homes when people are inside, and kills domestic animals. That it must be a spirit is proven because both knife and gun are useless in defence. Protection comes from substances holding cosmic power, perhaps gunpowder folded up in paper; Myang pulls out a dead battery, saying its power helps him ward off the po gamo.
Almost all cultures have deeply believed in animations hiding on the edge of the spirit world; familiar names for these are ghosts, angels, or spectres. In such usage, ancient soundings from our human souls have sensed something we do not precisely know as sentient beings; we touch there with sensation but it is beyond cognition. Science may deny their existence, but such belief crosses cultures (only most of these apparitions do not make footprints). As we sat by the fire, Pasang described another beast, the needene.
Quite astounding, this needene—an animal only in the female form—is a lady with pendulous breasts half-a-metre long. When running, these women flip their breasts over their shoulders to stop them from smacking. Finding a child to kidnap, the needene touches the child, which makes the youngster speechless, and then she carries the child to her cave. When a needene leaves to search for food or more children, the dumbness departs and the youth then wails plaintively; this their parents hear in the valleys below. To these captured ones the needene brings insects. When searching for such food, if the needene does not return soon, the children wander, and their parents may find them stumbling among the rhododendrons. Recovery from the dumbness will happen when the children are slowly fed ash soup.
It was clear that these realities are believed, and in the reality in which they are held the line between physical and supernatural existence blurs. Physical reality and supernatural cognition allow a spirit to dwell alternately, simultaneously, or in only one state. Perhaps, we thought as we talked by the fire, this is because their Buddhist view emphasizes that life is in a world of imperfect understanding where things that appear concrete can be illusion, and illusions mask the identity of the real.
When absorbing life by a campfire in the jungle, the world of streets, timetables, and cities must be relegated to one orientation. There in the jungle, where life does not naturally linearly connect cause to effect, a different awareness opens. In the jungle, reality is of Nature’s making not human, understanding osmosis from existence itself as we listen to a different understanding. Concepts grow, and believability changes. Of this world what most of us know are stories, and though fascinating, pragmatism denies their truth. But a campfire in the jungle ignites such consciousness; learning comes from beyond that which can be measured, beyond sounds and smells. Senses exist that we cannot touch, smell, see, or figure out. Villagers experience events, then explain these realities that have been imprinted in their lives. Something came into their lives from the wild. It is inadequate to say ‘It happens’, for real life is messier.
In making their lives, almost all cultures choose to live apart from the wild. Even Shyakshila hangs on a slope outside the jungle. Its people may visit the jungle, but they do not live there. Homo sapiens seem to seek a human-made environment. The major feature of habitation that differs between wealthy people and villagers is that villagers build with materials from the land, whereas the wealthy bring in from afar, and do not do the building. The objective is the same: to get away from the wild.
By being around the civilizing influence of a fire, asking about a wild man while still encircled by the jungle, what is discovered is defined by circumstance—so might it be the glacial context that shapes the Yeti observations of tired mountaineers. Our senses and our moods define our objectivity. Similarly, trying to interpret evidence in a world of science presses the Yeti to a definition which is not where the Yeti originate
d. Finding a footprint, does the lonely mountaineer think wild man, or does he think, ‘Ahh, some man was here before me?’ Each individual, whether a villager, or a tired mountaineer, or a scientist, thinks not just in their worlds but also in that particular moment. For villagers, the explanation is simple: a sign of an apparition from the wild, then he or she walks on. The relationship to local life got answered. The intent was never to explain taxonomy.
Is this explanation really true for Nepalis? Bob and I try to remember as we have been walking these mountains for decades. One thing we had noted, that explains the Yeti, is that the now extensive Yeti lore may have become magnified because of Western interest. What happened was Westerners picked up then amplified a feature that Sherpas saw and simply walked on from. Outsiders went into the valleys, and seeing Everest was not enough. Back in Kathmandu, they went to the Yak and Yeti Bar, got yakking, then saw all sorts of wild men. Nepalis discovered money was made off T-shirts that portrayed the Yeti that way. Bob noted how in religious thangka paintings the older paintings show demons and spirits, but no Yetis. Today, on the new thangkas, Yetis can be seen peeking from behind Buddhas. Might it be Yetis are being seen now because people want to see them?
Indeed, what do Nepalis see? Again, it is footprints. But footprints found by Nepalis indicate backward feet, toes pointing away from the direction the animal walks. Is there any proof, Nick wondered, of toes spun 180 degrees? Bob reported Sherpas out with their flocks seeing Yetis, and when he pressed such herders their reply was, ‘I’ve not seen myself, but my father saw when he was a boy with yaks high in the pastures.’ Tenzing Norgay, who first climbed Everest, told Bob just that. In sum, there is no evidence except always the footprints, and now it is not even clear in which direction they were going.
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 5