Nick was fascinated by the flipped feet: physiologically, wondering how connecting the foot up with bones and musculature backwards would control the forward falling that is called walking. Hominoids have two distinctive physical abilities: speech and walking. Both physical abilities have specialized structures. And for walking more is involved than just the feet, paraphernalia from balance hairs inside the ear to kneecaps and complex neural–muscle connects. It would be impossible for reverse evolution to turn around such complexity (unless evolution had gone in two directions many millions of years ago).
But as evidence of cosmic power, the magic of turned-around feet makes the Yeti—that is the villager’s point. If the footprint-making Yeti is a bear or a monkey, flipped feet make it a superhero. When baffling things happen, that now have an explanation, it is easy to overlook complex connects from balance canals to toes, or life in a world where there is little food and many challenges. To these, heroic answers, like religion, give explanation on the trail of life meaning, answers every bit as real as science, just evolving from a different reality.
That ‘Yeti’ is a uniquely Sherpa word is relevant. The Tibetan language from which the Sherpa language descends does not use Yeti, but uses me tay for this beast in the same manner as the Nepali language uses bun manchi. A me tay in Tibet can outrun a human; it lives in rocky mountains (a puzzling habitat as a rocky terrain doesn’t have much food and lets a reclusive animal be seen). And the me tay grows even less logical as real since one of its favourite foods is reportedly frogs, and above 10,000 feet amphibians are rare in the Himalaya, especially in rocks. Anyway, when crossing a stream and seeing mud and disturbance, lore says to suspect this indicates a me tay is frog-rootling upstream.
A me tay can grow 10-feet tall. It can come into a yak herd, sling a 200-pound yearling yak over their shoulder, and walk off. Footprints are never found, and when a me tay eats these lost yaks no remains can be found. To this Nick suggested, ‘The me tay might be a story developed by yak poachers. They creep up during the night, make tracks that appear to be coming when actually going, grab a yak, maybe dye the coat to mask its identity; suddenly a group of poachers is one yak richer.’
But a logical explanation is not what the yak herder wants. For a herder caring for someone else’s yaks, his problem is that one yak has disappeared. The likely explanation is that the yak, while the herder was inattentive, walked off and fell over a cliff. But to avoid being accused of carelessness, the herder who must report to the yak owner, gives an explanation that cannot be followed up. Is the owner going to search the mountains for that yak?
With a mystery, does one look at the footprint, or the trail? It is easy to focus on the footprints when the story lies in the trail. For a Nepali, what the Yeti provides is not a mystery but an explanation. To the scientist who sees flaws among the facts, the Yeti is a masquerade. But across cultures and across a century, for some the footprints go forward, backwards for others, and whatever direction the prints signature on a mountain slope, they imprint meaning.
In one way, it is like sunrise across the same slope that also speaks of undeniable magic that transcends what is happening physically. Does a viewer really want to think about the refraction of light while looking at a sunrise? Yet the footprints that keep returning, for the scientifically inclined, call for answers of taxonomy. For the spiritual, what had been given is an animation of life-force worlds. Still, while this discourse goes on and on, with the Yeti always there and undeniably real are footprints. Because no one sees that particular set of prints being made, what is seen becomes defined by what one wants to be seen.
THE NEXT MORNING BOB LEAVES to return to the confluence where his wife Linda waits. As he leaves, Bob questions how sure I am that the ridge tracks had no nail marks. For bears, and certainly tree-climbing bears, have nails; and bears do not walk on two feet. He points out that bears, like many animals such as house cats, place their hind feet precisely into their forefoot prints, making the prints look bipedal.
That morning Nick and Jennifer prepare to leave the camp to implement what we all know is a crackpot scheme, for we’ve concluded we need to call in our animal and watch it make prints. But, never having made a Yeti lure, nor having successful traps to compare to, our thought is to cause a tree smell. Draw the mysterious footprint-maker, presumably now a tree bear, bait it, and have snow around the tree able to take the prints. We plan to scatter scents in the air. The enticement will be spreading peanut butter on branches and inside hanging cans punctured with holes to let the peanut smell waft out. Bears on four feet will be looking on the ground, and those on two feet will be reaching up. Bears that can climb trees will be going up. Years before while guiding in the Grand Teton Mountains, as I was reading a book, a black bear came inside my tent and on top of me because it smelled the peanuts I was eating from a can beside my head.
Jennifer and Nick will distribute our peanut-flavoured traps in the bamboo belt that is plentiful with bamboo shoots. The wind will waft peanut aroma around the ridges. Grandpa reported that a Himalayan black bear could smell a rotting animal 15 miles away. Tomorrow we will return to the trees and see what has come. As they go off, staying in the camp, Jesse and I turn to stories.
WINNIE-THE-POOH SAT DOWN AT THE FOOT OF THE TREE, put head between his paws and began to think.
First of all he said to himself: ‘That buzzing-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee.’
Then he thought another long time, and said: ‘And the only reason for being a bee that I know is making honey.’
And then he got up, and said: ‘And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.’ So he began to climb the tree.
THE FOLLOWING DAY NICK AND I DEPART in separate directions. My task is to search the next valley for signs. Nick will check the cans. On an east-facing slope I find a fresh leopard scat filled with brown hairs and big bone chips. Was it a common leopard, or maybe the rarer clouded leopard that lives in dense, warm temperate jungles? The altitude is too low for the snow leopard. From amid a large stand of maples, a ghoral stares at me, peeking over a fallen tree, and then bounces away. With just its head visible and the light on it shadowed, was it really a ghoral or a juvenile serow? The photograph I squeezed off will tell.
Entering the belt of thick bamboo, crawling through the two-foot-high tunnels, I come upon fresh red panda scat. Ahead, the hind end of another animal disappears. White legs … a serow? Or did the colour change by a flash of light? Or was it a musk deer? Suddenly I wonder what I should do if a bear charges in this bamboo tube. I pull out the canister of tear gas mixed with the oil of pepper. No one has used this on Himalayan bears, but some folks in Yellowstone now carry it. I open my water bottle, moisten my bandana, and pull it around my neck, ready to draw up over my nose and mouth in case I must shoot the canister.
Breaking out from the standing bamboo into where wind or snows have matted down the once 20-foot-high bamboo, the stalks are packed and vines entwine with the bamboo, a total thicket. Lacking a kukri to cut my way and remain on the ground, I slither to the top of the mat. I have no idea what mashed this bamboo down. As I step out, the mat heaves like a trampoline. Two-thirds of the way across, my feet slip, zipping me down. Suspended by my backpack straps, I am caught above the ground.
If I try to get out by falling to the ground and forcing my way, my pack will remain hanging in the bamboo above. My right arm inches into my pocket where I have parachute cord, working that hand back until the cord is in the front of my teeth. Inches from my face, framed by bamboo green, is a beautiful red, black, and yellow diamond weave. Using hand and teeth, I tie the cord into a bowline. First, the flip of a small loop, then out of the loop comes the rabbit (as we said in Boy Scouts), around the tree, and it ducks back in. I pull the
rabbit tight. That loop is dropped to my boot as a stirrup.
Now knot the other end—bend it into a bight, then loop that around the big bamboo near my face, feeding the string through the loop. Do it again, then again: a Prusik knot. Swing the stirrup end until it loops over my boot, easing weight on to that. The beauty of a Prusik knot is that it slides up a rope (or bamboo stalk) when weight is off but locks when weight is on. I wedge myself and unseat the knot so it slides—one step and I am 4 inches higher. Lifting my foot and slackening the cord again, 4 inches more and shortly I’m back on top of the bamboo mat.
I pull out a squashed chapatti from my pack, and look up at the sky; a lammergeyer eagle circles, its long tail identifiable it as it rolls and turns. The biggest bird in these mountains, it’s a vulture, really. They soar with a 9-foot wingspan on currents of ridges, wings flat like the griffon’s, not folding into the ‘V’ of a golden eagle. This bird is probably looking for carrion. Up tips one wing—and the great bird rolls. Up on the other wing—it rolls the other way, effortlessly like a pilot in a Pitts Special acrobatic plane. Though the undersides of the griffon and the lammergeyer are both white, this eagle, when doing its splendid turns, can never be mistaken for a griffon. Aggressive, the lammergeyer sometimes chases the griffon whose 8-foot wingspan is only a foot less. Seemingly more creative than the griffon, finding carrion, a lammergeyer drops the bones on a rock, and from the shattered fragments picks out the marrow. As I watch, another lammergeyer comes into view. Does circling by the first call this second, perhaps sending word of a body lying motionless on the bamboo below—but, no, what I see is courtship. Down swoops the first bird, showing his prowess before her whom he has attracted; straight down, then with a dip of that long tail, shoots up, over the top, making an inside loop more smoothly than any pilot in a Pitts Special.
The doggerel, that our favourite spinster, Miss Marley, teaching English to us at Woodstock School in the Mussoorie Hills, comes back to me:
What is the mind of the vulture …
That sits and thinks
That stares and stinks
And has no culture?
Anyone who watched this bird could never assume such a soaring creature lacked culture; indeed all vultures (a bird that never kills but removes the kill of others) in attending to their ecological roles are efficiencies of flight and immaculate in their grooming. When writing her poem, Miss Marley might well have listened more closely to her pupil, Bobby Fleming. For it was Bob who explained to me the behaviour of this greatest of Himalayan birds. As I watch the couple above dance, twisting together in flight, with a sudden chandelle turn, one bird takes off, the other following over the ridge, neither now a spinster.
Over supper Nick reports how he lost the trail in the fresh snow that was at higher elevations, so he couldn’t find the cans and has no idea whether ‘something’ found them. But in a clump of bamboo he found maybe forty stalks broken at a 3-foot height. The stalks were an inch in diameter, hefty bamboo, that by himself he could not break. Yet these were snapped once, then again in another direction, to make what looked like a nest.
The next day Nick and I together try to break that bamboo. The animal that made this 5-foot-wide nest seems to have snapped stalks wherever it wanted. One clump of bamboo was shaped into a basket. Is this the handiwork of a tree bear seeking to make a sleeping place above the soaking snow? I am familiar with birds making nests, even squirrel nests, but here a very big animal is evidencing basket-like handiwork.
Almost 6 feet above the first is a second nest, also made of broken bamboo. The animal seemed to have sat in the nearby rhododendron tree, reached out and brought bamboo over and bent the stalks around a fork in the tree. Ten feet away is a third nest, smaller than the first, made similarly. Is the bigger nest the mother’s and the two smaller up higher for offspring? Did each animal make its own, or did the mother (if that is the explanation) make all three? Did they stay one night, or did they use these nests for several nights?
We search the nests for hairs. But snow has been falling for half-an-hour. Nick’s lips are blue, and he’s having trouble talking. I force him to drink the rest of my orange drink, still warm from being rolled up inside a down vest in my pack. He perks up and talks clearly. I also give him the vest as well as a dry ski hat; somewhat normal now, he heads back to camp eating our last two candy bars. With hypothermia, the important thing is to identify it before body temperature starts to fall. Our footprints coming give him an obvious return trail.
Returning to the search, nail marks can be seen on the tree trunk a little more than a yard above the second nest, with more marks on the baskets’ bamboo stalks. Three stiff black hairs, maybe 2 inches long, are wedged against tree bark. There are two more hairs in one of the tree nests, stiff black hairs precisely like those of a bear.
Descending to the camp and now looking into trees, I spot two limb clusters high in two adjoining oak trees. Both look 5–6 feet across and maybe 60 feet above the ground. Studying them through binoculars, I notice that the branches are stacked much like the bamboo. Up the tree are scratches that slant diagonally. Why are the scratches not straight down, reflecting an angle of pull as the animal climbs or descends? Then I realize this animal did not claw up like a cat. Each oak has a thick vine growing alongside the trunk and on the back of these vines are nail marks. The animal seemed to have grabbed the vine with its front paws, leaned back and pulled, hind paws on the trunk, climbing like a monkey up a tree. The animal I suspect Lendoop calls ‘tree bear’ certainly acts apelike.
3.4 Nick Looking up at a Bamboo Nest in the Rhododendron Tree
Source: Author
POOH SAT DOWN, DUG HIS FEET INTO THE GROUND, and pushed against Christopher Robin’s back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard back against his, and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
‘And that’s that,’ said Pooh. ‘What do we do next?’
‘We are all going on an Expedition,’ said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. ‘Thank you Pooh.’
‘Going on an Expotition?’ said Pooh eagerly. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?’
‘Expedition, silly old Bear. It’s got an “x” in it.’
‘Oh!’ said Pooh. ‘I know.’ But he didn’t really.
‘We’re going to discover the North Pole.’
‘Oh!’ said Pooh again. ‘What is the North Pole?’ he asked.
‘It’s just a thing you discover,’ said Christopher Robin carelessly, not being quite sure of himself.
‘Oh! I see,’ said Pooh. ‘Are bears any good at discovering it?’
‘PAPA,’ JESSE SAYS, ‘I’M ON AN EXPEDITION TOO … just like Christopher Robin.’
We are sitting around the campfire, having just finished supper and I’m reading to Jesse. Lendoop returns having walked Bob out and shown his bear skulls, and he’s eager to take us to Shyakshila, saying we can make it in one day and must leave the next morning. We tease him that it’s too fast, because it took the porters three days to trek in. Then he flips the rag on us, ‘Jesse’s mother walks like a Nepali woman—she also carries a heavy load.’ I laugh. Given her eagerness to get out of this jungle where it is always raining, she will be doubly strong, for at the Barun’s jungle-free confluence she’ll be able to sit in the sun near what Jesse calls Poohsticks Bridge.
That last night in Makalu Jungli Hot’l, from my sleeping bag I listen to noises give description to the night. If we stayed another day, could I find the peanut butter cans? Another day, and maybe we could find more nests and the chance to study them carefully? I’ll soon be planning another expedition—but through exploring this jungle with Jesse I’ve lived again my jungle years with Grandpa and Dad. Beeps of that giant flying squirrel come out of the night. When we listen to what we don’t see, life outlines our wild world in so many ways.
Jennifer awakens me before dawn, trying to be quiet as she packs. Outside, pots rattle as Pasang an
d Nuru are at work taking down the cook site. Pasang calls to Lendoop to strike the porter’s tent. Before dawn turns into day everything is packed, and by eight breakfast is over. The four porters from Shyakshila haven’t arrived, but no one wants to wait, so we pile on doubled loads. Lendoop smiles, looking across as Jennifer tightens what must be a sixty-pound pack.
We start off; when one person slips, another supports. Jokes pass member-to-member down the muddy trail, hands outstretch to each other moving almost as one, creating in our group the feel of a centipede with all its legs. Pasang’s basket with another basket on top jangles with the cacophony of spoons and plates nested inside pots inside larger pots. Yetis, bears, and crimson-horned pheasants will hear our out passage as the jungle returns to being theirs.
The four porters wait at Payreene Khola; they had stopped in the opening of the landslide for their morning rice, assuming they needn’t hurry in as we would be leaving tomorrow. Steam and smoke from their fire curl together with mist from the waterfalls. Loads are redivided as we drink sweet hot tea. Then as we shoulder our loads, the momentum of home carries us like the current of the Barun from the heart of the jungle.
The next morning, Lendoop and Lhakpa wait outside our tents. I had hoped they would bring their skulls to us, my knees sore from yesterday. But skulls are not their priority; their desire is to host us in their homes. Pasang, having heard so much about Shyakshila while he cooked, wants to see their village too. Our first stop is tea at Lhakpa’s, then boiled eggs at Myang’s, where Myang’s wife cannot take her eyes off Jennifer and Jesse. She blushes when Jennifer speaks to her, and doesn’t respond though we had seen her repeatedly at our camp. Her two children come out of the back room, and we pass along several of Jesse’s T-shirts.
At Lendoop’s house, before we enter he explains the immense boulder in his yard, half the size of his house. The autumn before, land loosened by monsoon rains, this boulder rolled down, stopping only because he had levelled a little terrace there in front of his house. ‘My life and my family are lucky,’ he says. ‘Disasters always miss me.’
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 6