The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  A strong argument against the existence of both sasquatch and yeti (and the whole world-wide phenomenon called "Bigfoot") is that man's expeditions in pursuit of these elusive creatures have all failed. However, this may only prove that Bigfoot habitat is virtually impenetrable, and that after long centuries of hiding, these rare creatures are exceptionally wary. Perhaps the best way to find Bigfoot is to set up camp in a likely region and live there quietly until this creature, in its primate curiosity, makes a few investigations of its own.

  The Nepal government takes yeti seriously, and there is a strict law against killing them. But one of the Arun valley scientists has a permit that would allow him to collect one of these creatures, and I asked him what he would do if, one fine morning, a yeti presented itself within fair range; it seemed to me that this decision should not wait for the event. The biologist was unsettled by the question; he had not made this hard decision, or if he had, was not at peace with it

  After a moment, looking up, he asked me a hard question of his own. He could understand why GS, as a biologist, would walk hundreds of miles over high mountains to collect wildlife data on the Tibetan Plateau. But why was I going? What did I hope to find?

  I shrugged, uncomfortable. To say I was interested in blue sheep or snow leopards, or even in remote lamaseries, was no answer to his question, though all of that was true; to say I was making a pilgrimage seemed fatuous and vague, though in some sense that was true as well. And so I admitted that I did not know. How could I say that I wished to penetrate the secrets of the mountains in search of something still unknown that, like the yeti, might well be missed for the very fact of searching?

  We cross the river on an old wood bridge and descend the Bherl Canyon. Today I feel a little sad and a little sick. GS thinks this is the sudden loss of altitude —we have dropped seven thousand feet from the Jang La—and I regret all those raw purple beans; whatever it is, my gut feels as heavy as my spirits, which had been so exhilarated in the snows.

  Though these journals remind me of the date, I have long since lost track of the day of the week, and the great events that must be taking place in the world we left behind are as illusory as events from a future century. It is not so much that we are going back in time as that time seems circular, and past and 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 and space. In these mountains, we have fallen behind history.

  I long to let go, drift free of things, to accumulate less, depend on less, to move more simply. Therefore I felt out of sorts after having bought that blanket—another thing, another burden to the spirit. The weaver wished a most reasonable price for a heavy blanket of fine colors. But with Tukten's encouragement, I bargained him down, and though this was expected, it depressed me, all the more so because, for Tukten and Pirim, who were present as cheerful translators in the transaction, the cost of this blanket—eighteen dollars —was twelve times their porter's wage of fifteen rupees a day. The sherpas fare scarcely any better, even those who risk their lives on climbing expeditions; until recently, at least, the daily wage on even the most perilous peaks was about four dollars, whereas sherpas on treks such as our own receive but two.

  Across the canyon, on the steepest slope, a slash-and-burn agriculture has been attempted, for along the Bheri, as in most of Nepal, the good land has run out. The great pines still clinging to the inaccessible corners of this canyon are monuments to a ruined wilderness: very soon, the last of the trees that hold these mountainsides together will be gone. The flood carries eroded stone down from the glaciers, and the deep canyon it has carved across the ages, with its extraordinary layers of folded rock, is remarkably hot and dry, almost xerotic, by comparison to river canyons at this altitude on the far side of the Jang. We notice, too, that the clouds that come up every afternoon south of the Jang are missing here as we draw closer to the mountain deserts of the Tibetan Plateau, which is cut off from the monsoon rains by the rising of the Himalaya. Yet despite the heat, a cool breeze is flowing up the canyon, and the river path is pleasant. On rock tumulus I spy a goral, a neat small brown goat-antelope related to the chamois and the North American mountain goat; otherwise, a hoopoe and white butterflies are the only signs of life.

  A sparkling tributary, the Jairi Khola, falls in cascades from a snow peak called Dwari Lekh. We make camp on the river bank not far beyond, and Phu-Tsering obtains maize on the cob and small tomatoes for our supper. The hamlet here is just east of Dunahi, which is the frontier administration post for Dolpo.

  The Bheri continues west as far as Tibrikot, on the main trade route between Tarakot and Jumila, in far western Nepal; our own route turns north across the river bridge, a few miles down, and climbs the Suli River. From the administrative point of view, we enter Dolpo once we cross the Bheri, but the "Land of Dolpo" of my own imagination lies off there on the farther side of the Kanjirobas.

  At Dhorpatan we had been warned that the police check posts at Tarakot, and perhaps at Dunahi, might ignore our trekking permits and forbid us to continue into Dolpo; worry on this point, with debates on strategy, has occupied us for some days. A chronic problem all along the way has been the language barrier, which fills the regional officials (already suspicious of our avowed interest in wildlife) with insecurity and often leads them to face-saving stubbornness. The Sherpas, being Buddhist, are not acceptable as witnesses on our behalf, and thus there is considerable risk that after walking for three weeks, we shall be stopped for no good reason, just one week—as we suppose—from our destination.

  OCTOBER 20

  The police official at Dunahi is absent on a journey, and instead we are dealt with by the local member of the Nepal Panchayat, or Parliament; police underlings make no effort to contest this sophisticated man who speaks good English, understands our aims, and offers tea. Greatly relieved, we get under way as quickly as we can, before something can go wrong. The Kang Pass in the Kanjirobas is now the last serious obstacle on our journey to the Crystal Mountain.

  At Dunahi, the bridge crosses the Bheri, and the path climbs steeply up dry mountainside of sage and spear grass and the silver-leaved wild olive. Far below, the river curves in a broad bend of burnished gravel bars toward its confluence with the Suli Gad, which rushes down from Phoksumdo Lake and the snows of the Kanjirobas, holding its turquoise blue for a short reach along the north bank of the Bheri before subsiding into the gray glacial flood. The Suli Gorge is so precipitous that the path must climb high above the Bheri before rounding the steep mountainside above the confluence and entering this canyon, and even here, one thousand feet or more above the water, the incline is such that the path is scarcely two feet wide in places, sometimes less; where the path has slid away or been blotted out by slides, we scrabble across loose rocks as best we can.

  GS seems casual on ledges, although the telescope strapped across his rucksack, caught upon a rock, could nudge him off the edge; I can scarcely look. However, I am getting hardened: I walk lighter, stumble less, with more spring in leg and lung, keeping my center of gravity deep in the belly, and letting that center "see.'* At these times, I am free of vertigo, even in dangerous places; my feet move naturally to firm footholds, and I flow. But sometimes for a day or more, I lose this feel of things, my breath is high up in my chest, and then I cling to the cliff edge as to life itself. And of course it is this clinging, the tightness of panic, that gets people killed: "to clutch," in ancient Egyptian, "to clutch the mountain," in Assyrian, were euphemisms that signified "to die."17

  Before departing, I had taken leave of Eido Roshi, and spoke to him of odd death whispers that had come for several months. He nodded; perhaps what such whispers anticipated was a spiritual "great death" and a rebirth. "The snow," he murmured, "may signify extinction, and renewal" After a pause, he warned me, "Expect nothing." The Roshi was pleased that there would be but two of us—this seemed to him a condition of true pilgrimage. He instructed me to r
ecite the Kannon Sutra as I walked among the mountains, and gave me a koan (a Zen paradox, not to be solved by intellect, that may bring about a sudden dissolution of logical thought and clear the way for direct seeing into the heart of existence):

  All the peaks are covered with snow — why is this one bare?

  The Roshi rose from his black cushion and, taking me by the shoulders, touched my forehead three times with his own, then smote my back, and sent me on my way with a great shout.

  "Expect nothing." Walking along, I remind myself of that advice; I must go lightly on my way, with no thought of attainment. Instead of the Kannon Sutra, I intone OM MANI PADME HUM, which is addressed to the same great Bodhisattva and, when recited one word for each step, has a resonant and mighty sound much better suited to this slow tread up the mountain.

  Aum . . . Ma-ni . . . Pay-may . . . Hung!

  Disputing the path is a great copper-colored grasshopper, gleaming like amber in the sun; so large is it, and so magical its shimmer, that I wonder if this grasshopper is not some oldnaljorpa, advanced in the art of taking other forms. But before such a "perfected one" can reveal himself, the grasshopper springs carelessly over the precipice, to start a new life hundreds of feet below. I choose to take this as a sign that I must entrust myself to life, and thanking the grasshopper, I step out smartly on my way.

  An empty village on the path above the Suli Gad is used in winter by the yakherders of Inner Dolpo, whose animals find forage on these lower slopes. But in the autumn, in the morning shadow and clear light, the doorways and windows are black as eyeholes in a skull, and the emptiness is deepened by a prayer flag's tatter on the wind, and a child's call from higher up the valley. Under the village, a stream comes down the mountain, and while GS goes up the gully a short way, trying to photograph a troupe of langurs, I wash myself in the warm sunlight where the water sparkles cold and clear over flat stones. Eventually GS returns, the sherpas come, and we all eat together in the willow and aspen shade at streamside, flavoring the chapatis with seeds of the small wild Cannabis, for which we compete with the Himalayan goldfinch.

  From this place there is a very steep ascent of an hour or more. The Tarakot porters grumble, and even the Tamangs struggle for breath, all but Karsung, who is singing. A Bhotia family without animals descends the trail, nods shyly, and is gone. At 9400 feet, the path reaches the cliff top, leveling off as it winds around the mountain. The Bheri is far behind us and below, and a snow peak of the Kanjirobas is rising, quiet as a cloud, on the northern blue. A claterynge of choughs, lilting along upon the air currents, delights me, and for want of a fresh way to let well-being overflow, I talk to GS rapturously about my boots, which are broken in at last and give me no end of honest pleasure. Mildly alarmed by my euphoria, he goes on rapidly. Left to myself, I listen contentedly to the leather creak of my back harness and beloved boots, the steady thump of my faithful stave upon the mountain, feeling as indomitable as Padma Sambhava, who carried the Dharma from India into Tibet.

  Upon the path, in the glint of mica and odd shining stones, lies the yellow and gray-blue feather of an unknown bird. And there comes a piercing intuition.

  by no means understood, that in this feather on the silver path, this rhythm of wood and leather sounds, breath, sun and wind, and rush of river, in a landscape without past or future time—in this instant, in all instants, transience and eternity, death and life are one.

  Higher still, a crude cave has been dug out of the mountainside. Awed by wind, the precipice, the roar of the wild river far below, travelers have thought it prudent to construct a group of cairns. On the east face of each edifice is a rough niche for offerings, and one cairn is decorated with fresh marigolds, no doubt placed there by the folk met earlier along the trail According to Tukten, who lifts his palms together in mock suppHcation and wild nervous glee, these cairns are dedicated to an ancient mountain god called Masta.

  To the north, high on the mountain's face, has come in view the village called Rohagaon. The track passes along beneath wild walnut trees. The last leaves are yellowed and stiff on the gaunt branches, and the nuts are fallen; the dry scratch and whisper of sere leaves bring on the vague melancholy of some other autumn, half-remembered. Cracked nutshells Utter big flat stones along the path, and among the shells lie fresh feathers of a hoopoe, perhaps killed in the act of gleaning by the accipiter tiiat darts out of the bush ahead and down over the void of the Suli Gorge. In a copse below Rohagaon, maple, sumac, locust, and wild grape evoke the woods of home, but the trees differ just enough from the familiar ones to make the wood seem dreamlike, a wildwood of children's tales, found again in a soft autumn haze. The wildwood brings on mild nostalgia, not for home or place, but for lost innocence—the paradise lost that, as Proust said, is the only paradise. Childhood is full of mystery and promise, and perhaps the life fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained. It is just at the moment of seeming fulfillment that we sense irrevocable betrayal, like a great wave rising silently behind us, and know most poignantly what Milarepa meant: "All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death. . . ." Confronted by the uncouth specter of old age, disease, and death, we are thrown back upon the present, on this moment, here, right now, for that is all there is. And surely this is the paradise of children, that they are at rest in the present, like frogs or rabbits.

  From somewhere comes the murmur of a hidden brook, and the chill air of autumn afternoon carries a mineral smell of humus. GS and I put down our packs and gather wild walnuts in the wood; soon the sherpas and porters come, and we run about in happy adolescence, and crack small grudging nuts in the twilight haze beyond the trees before climbing up the last steep path into Rohagaon.

  If Tarakot had a medieval air, one enters the Dark Ages in Rohagaon. The approaches to the place are guarded by dhauliyas, "protectors," crudely inscribed on big flat stones, and on the primitive entrance stupa (like a huge cairn) has been laid a god's supply of marijuana. Neither Buddhism nor Hinduism has displaced the old religions of this Thakuri folk, who heap up offerings of goat heads in their primitive temple to Masta. Brutal human effigies in wood protect the low stone huts, and half-wild curs rage at strangers from the rooftops; the dead crows hung from high poles in the turnip gardens, feathers lifting in October evening wind, are the primordial scarecrows of mankind.

  As we enter the village, the men stare stupidly as if transfixed, but the dour women soon resume their labors; one pounds millet with an outlandish wooden pestle, another bends beneath a crude wood cask, which even in Tarakot had been replaced by the brass water urn. The women wear black cloth, the men soot-colored clothes of other cultures, the children rags; every face is masked in black, black even by the standards of this region, where ceaseless exposure to manure dust, pine smoke, soot makes filth endemic. But for all their grime, the children lack the cloddish grimness of their parents: rushing about as we set up tents, playing loud games for our benefit, they celebrate this moment of their life.

  Rohagaon on the mountainside has a majestic prospect down the valley of the Suli Gad to the low snow peaks in the western reach of Dhaulagiri. Soon stars fill this southern sky, and at the sight of the moon rising, the mongrels go berserk. The October moon reminds me that at home it will soon be Halloween, and I wonder if my son will carve a pumpkin. He has a skeleton costume, white bones painted on black cloth, but this year his colt legs in their high sneakers will certainly stick out too far beneath—what will he wear? What mask will cover my child's face on All Hallow's Eve, as he celebrates the festival of fire and death? I lie sleepless, shouting hopelessly, as the exalted dog in the house above, crazed by the pale tents in the moonlight, barks unceasingly from midnight until dawn, without the smallest loss of tone or volume.

  OCTOBER 21

  We leave Rohagaon as the first light tints the snow peaks to the south.<
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  Outside the village, two little girls in wool boots and bead necklaces, carrying water, tarry on a corner of the trail to watch us go; minutes later, I look back, and still they stand there, little ragged stumps on the daybreak sky.