The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  Namu takes tea with us this morning, bringing roast barleycorns, which give a welcome character to the gray porridge. She vouches for the traders, telling us that they had come through here last year from their home on the Bheri River. Formerly they traded into Bhot, or B'od, which she pronounces "Po.'' The Land of Po. Traditionally, the central provinces of U and Thang are known to Tibetans as "Bod," which has been translated as "native place," or "home": eastern Tibet is known as Khams, and western Tibet was composed formerly of small kingdoms such as Do (Mustang) and Dol. I think of Tsurton-Wang-Gay— like Milarepa, a disciple of Marpa—who came from the Land of Dol; if, as may be, the ancient Dol and Dol Po are the same, then the oldest prayer stones deep in the stone field west of the gompa might have been carved in the days of the eleventh century when Tsurton-Wang-Gay walked these mountains, and Milarepa's skin was turning green due to subsistence on the nettles near his cave. Perhaps it was just such light-fingered fellows as our visitors from Saldang that Milarepa had in mind when he referred to "those lawless folk, the Yepo and Yemo of Dol."17

  This morning I go up on Somdo mountain to observe twelve rams that so far show no interest in the females; they remain on the horizon, under the snows. After two hours of hard climbing, I am higher than Black Pond, and the whole canyon of the Black River, ascending toward the Kang Pass, lies exposed to view. Beyond the Kang soars a resplendent wall of white that dominates the sky to the southwest; it is the great ice wall of Kanjiroba, a rampart of crystalline escarpments and white-winged cornices, well over 20,000 feet in height. Here there is only a light air from the east, but the high wind on Kanjiroba is blowing clouds of a fine snow from points and pinnacles that turn into transparency against the blue.

  Two black specks of life twitch on the whiteness. The wool traders are nearing the Black Pond and by early afternoon might reach the pass; perhaps they will sleep tonight at Cave Camp and be safe at Ring-mo late tomorrow. For some reason, the sight of the two figures on the waste brings to mind Ongdi the Trader, then the Kathmandu of my first visit in 1961, in winter, when the old bazaars were thronged with mountain folk come down to trade. That year, the refugee Tibetans were numerous in the Nepal valley, bartering their precious religious objects in order to survive: most were indistinguishable from Bhotes like Ongdi, down out of the hills in beads and braids to trade their wool and salt for knives and tea. In the Asan Bazaar I found the green bronze Akshobhya Buddha that became the center of a small altar in D's room; Akshobhya is the "Imperturbable," being that aspect of Sakyamuni's nature that resisted the temptation of the demons under the bodhi tree at Gaya. The Buddha was placed on a throne of pine bark, a red berry in his lap and over his head a bodhi tree made from a bunch of pearly everlasting, very like this everlasting here on the slopes of Shey.

  These are luminous, as in those far October days in Tichu-Rong. There is no wisp of cloud—clear, clear, clear, clear. Although the shade is very cold throughout the day, and wind persists, the sun is hot—imagine a striped and shiny lizard above 15,000 feet, in deep November! For the first time in my life, I apprehend the pure heat of our star, piercing the frigid atmospheres of so many million miles of outer space.

  Rock, and snow peaks all around, the sky, and great birds and black rivers—what words are there to seize such ringing splendor? But again something arises in this ringing that is not quite bearable, a poised terror, as in the diamond ice that cracks the stone. The brain veers; the sun glints like a weapon. Then Black Canyon writhes and twists, and the Crystal Mountain looms as a castle of dread, and all the universe reverberates with horror. My head is the sorcerer's skull cup full of blood, and were I to turn, my eyes would see straight to the heart of chaos, the mutilation, bloody gore, and pain that is seen darkly in the bright eye of the lizard

  Then lunacy is gone, leaving an echo. The lizard is still there, one with its rock, flanks pulsing in the star heat that brings warmth to our common skin; eternity is not remote, it is here beside us.

  My plan is to stalk the bharal rams from above and from the east, with the sun behind me; the light east wind will soon die out, as it does each morning in fair weather, giving way after a lull to a north wind that will not carry my scent. I climb to snow line at the east end of the ridge and wait for the wind to die.

  Across the crest fly the Tibetan snow finches that until now I have only seen across the Stance, blowing in flurries through the blue. The finches land among the rocks, accompanied by larks, then rise with faint tinklings as suddenly as they have come, circling the summit in the morning light in showers of white wings, and bounding away into the north.

  In a shift of wind, it is so still that melt trickles can be heard from beneath the snow: the whole world rests. I work west along the ridge, peering down over mixed scree and snow until a strange outcrop of horn crescents comes in view. The bharal are wary, watching the lower mountain: the nearest horns are perhaps two hundred yards to westward and below. Crouching, I make my way in stealth to a rock clump within stoning distance of my quarry. There I indulge myself in a silent chortle of self-satisfaction, at which, in instant retribution, there falls upon my ears the hollow drumming of wild hooves upon the mountain.

  The sheep move west and north around the summit, and I follow. This time I arrive safe at my vantage point, and keep stern watch as consenting males push, shove, lick, sniff, and mount upon their colleagues. But soon there comes a familiar chirr-it, chirr-it, chirr-it, so very like a scolding rodent that I search among the grass tufts for a marmot. More than one bharal is snorting in alarm, and in seconds the band is off again at a scattering gallop on the gravel, leaving me dumbfounded, for I am well hidden, and I have not stirred.

  Perhaps I underestimate my smell.

  A golden eagle, with shrill peeping, glides down among the snows almost at eye level; the deep voice that would better suit this noble bird would not carry very far in so much emptiness. Soon afterward, wild pigeons pass on snapping blue-gray wings—the Turkestan hill pigeon that replaces the snow pigeon here on the Tibetan Plateau. In the frozen air, pigeons and eagle are superb, but they do not console me for the loss of my sheep, which I track over the ridge to the northern buttes; there the fresh prints in the snow lead down an incline so steep and icy that neither man nor wolf would care to follow. But the sheep have led me to the only point in all this landscape from which one might see those two pale buildings, far away on a plateau to the north and east. This view is my first and last in my present incarnation of the old B'on monastery called Samling, for the deep gorge of Black Canyon is impassable, and the way over the mountains blocked by snow.

  Jang-bu returns this afternoon with great good news. It is true that the track from Saldang across to Tarap remains open almost all winter; one has only to cross the Shey Pass to Saldang. And a yak trail from Saldang to Murwa, that pretty village below Ring-mo, under the great falls, stays open longer than the Kang. In this season many people from Saldang leave for Murwa and the Bheri in search of winter work; some go as laborers and porters, some hire out their yaks on the main route between Tarakot and Jumla, and others transport wool and salt for trade. At present they dance and drink their chang, in preparation for the winter exodus, but no doubt some few will be left by the time we need them for the outward journey.

  While in Saldang, Jang-bu talked to the two wool traders who later passed through Shey, and it turns out that these men whom we treated so inhospitably were carrying Jang-bu's messages to Tukten and Gyaltsen. There are no police at Saldang, Jang-bu says: there are "many temples" and a lama from Shey is there, just as reported. But the true Lama of Shey— and we realize now that Namu was protecting him— the tulku, or incarnate lama, whom I was so anxious to find, is none other than the crippled monk who was curing the goat skin in yak butter and brains, up at Tsakang.

  NOVEMBER 11

  In the east, at dark, bright Mars appears, and soon the full moon follows the sun's path, east to west across a blue-black sky. I am always restless in the time of the full mo
on, a common lunatic, and move about the frozen monastery, moon-watching. Rising over the White River, the moon illuminates the ghostly prayer flag blowing so softly on the roof of the still hut, and seems to kindle the stacked brushwood; on its altar stone my small clay Buddha stirs. The snow across the river glows, and the rocks and peaks, the serpentine black stream, the snows, sky, stars, the firmament—all ring like the bell of Dorje-Chang. Now! Here is the secret! Now!

  At daybreak, when the blue-black turns to silver in the east, the moon sets with the darkness in the west. On frozen sun rays, fourteen pigeons come to pick about the yard, pale blue-gray birds with a broad white band across the tail that fills with light as they flutter down upon the rigid walls. Like all wild things at Crystal Mountain, the hill pigeons are tame, and do not fly as I draw near, but cock their gentle dovelike heads to see me better.

  I climb the mountain with the sun, and find the mixed herd high up on the slope; I try angling toward them, then away again, zig-zagging as I climb. For some reason, this seems to reassure them, for after watching me awhile, and perhaps concluding that I am not to be taken seriously, they go on about their business, which this morning is unusually dull. I keep on climbing. Far below, the torrent, freed from daybreak ice, carries gray scree down out of the mountains.

  In hope of seeing the snow leopard, I have made a wind shelter and lookout on this mountain, just at snow line, that faces north over the Black Canyon all the way to the pale terraces below Samling. From here, the Tsakang mountainsides across Black River are in view, and the cliff caves, too, and the slopes between ravines, so that most of the blue sheep in this region may be seen should they be set upon by wolf or leopard. (GS estimates a population of 175 to 200 animals on the mountainsides in the near vicinity of Shey.) Unlike the wolves, the leopard cannot eat everything at once, and may remain in the vicinity of its kill for several days. Therefore our best hope is to see the griffons gather, and the choughs and ravens, and the lammergeier.

  The Himalayan griffon, buff and brown, is almost the size of the great lammergeier; its graceful turns against the peaks inspire the Tibetans, who, like the vanished Aryans of the Vedas, revere the wind and sky. Blue and white are the celestial colors of the B'on sky god, who is seen as an embodiment of space and light, and creatures of the upper air become B'on symbols—the griffon, the mythical garuda, and the dragon. For Buddhist Tibetans, prayer flags and wind-bells confide spiritual longings to the winds, and the red kites that dance on holidays over the old brown city of Kathmandu are of Tibetan origin as well. There is also a custom called "air burial," in which the body of the deceased is set out on a wild crag such as this one, to be rended and devoured by the wild beasts; when only the bones are left, these are broken and ground down to powder, then mixed into lumps of dough, to be set out again for passing birds. Thus all is returned into the elements, death into life.

  Against the faces of the canyon, shadows of griffons turn. Perhaps the Somdo raptors think that this queer lump on the landscape—the motionless form of a man in meditation—is the defunct celebrant in an air burial, for a young eagle, plumage burnished a heraldic bronzy-black, draws near with its high peeping, and a lammergeier, approaching from behind, descends with a sudden rush of feathers, sweeping so close past my head that I feel the break of air. This whisper of the shroud gives me a start, and my sudden jump flares the dark bird, causing it to take four deep slow strokes—the only movement of the wings that I was ever to observe in this great sailer that sweeps up and down the Himalayan canyons, the cold air ringing in its golden head.

  Dark, light, dark: a raptor, scimitar-winged, under the sun peak—I know, I know. In such a light, one might hope to see the shadow of that bird upon the sky.

  The ground whirls with its own energy, not in an alarming way but in slow spiral, and at these altitudes, in this vast space and silence, that energy pours through me, joining my body with the sun until small silver breaths of cold, clear air, no longer mine, are lost in the mineral breathing of the mountain. A white down feather, sun-filled, dances before me on the wind: alighting nowhere, it balances on a shining thorn, goes spinning on. Between this white feather, sheep dung, light, and the fleeting aggregate of atoms that is "I," there is no particle of difference. There is a mountain opposite, but this "I" is opposite nothing, opposed to nothing.

  I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and homespun boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles—the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do. We have had no news of modern times since late September, and will have none until December, and gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself.

  Having got here at last, I do not wish to leave the Crystal Mountain. I am in pain about it, truly, so much so that I have to smile, or I might weep. I think of D and how she would smile, too. In another life—this isn't what I know, but how I feel—these mountains were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one's own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon—the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.

  NOVEMBER 12

  Tukten and Gyaltsen came yesterday evening, a day ahead of the most optimistic schedule. They had good weather all the way and no snow at all on the low passes between Tibrikot and Jumla; they met the wool traders at Ring-mo, and someone led them to the Kang Pass. But according to Gyaltsen, who got here first, and burst out with his side of the story, there had been bad trouble on the journey. At Jimila, Tukten, very drunk, had hatched a plan to make off into India with the money that was sure to be found in our mail; the ensuing series of disputes between them had ended in Ring-mo in a violent fight the day before.

  Gyaltsen is young, excitable, and upset, but he is no liar; the sherpas have warned us about Tukten all along. Still, the story is unclear, and the mail has arrived safely. When Tukten comes, he is as open-faced and calm as ever, and says nothing against Gyaltsen, but includes his erstwhile traveling companion in a general attitude of friendliness. I admire Tukten for making no effort to defend himself, and even Jang-bu, who is Gyaltsen's friend and the one most suspicious of Tukten from the start, is soon laughing at his stories, entirely disarmed. Thief or no, I am happy and relieved to see him, as I am counting on this man for the outward journey.

  My letters I put away unopened, in my pack; they will not be read until I get to Jumla or Kathmandu. Today is the twelfth, and I leave on the eighteenth; even if the letters bring bad news, I could leave no earlier than the fifteenth, since Tukten and Gyaltsen have traveled hard, and must have rest. And good news, too, would be intrusive, spoiling this chance to live moment by moment in the present by stirring up the past, the future, and encouraging delusions of continuity and permanence just when I am trying to let go, to blow away, like that white down feather on the mountain.

  Yesterday a circumambulating wolf left a whole circle of tracks around the prayer wall across the river, at the foot of the trail that climbs around the mountains to Tsakang, and this morning, on the trail itself, there are prints of leopard. As if seeking protection, the blue sheep feed close by the hermitage, where I go with Jang-bu to call on the Lama of Shey.

  When we arrive, the Lama is inside chanting sutras, but his attendant sits outside, still cutting and sorting the small store of potatoes; he is an aspirant monk, or trapa, whose clear gaze makes him look m
uch younger than he is. His name is Takla, he is twenty-two years old, and he comes from the great northern plain of Tibet.

  On the sunny ledge, under the bright blue window of the gompa, we listen to the murmurs of the Lama and contemplate the prospect of the snows. Soon the mountains stir, then shift and vibrate—how vital these rocks seem, against blue sky! If only they would fly apart, consume us in a fire of white light. But I am not ready, and resist, in fear of losing my death grip on the world, on all that provides the illusion of security. The same fear—of loss of control, of ''insanity," far worse than the fear of death—can occur with the hallucinogenic drugs: familiar things, losing the form assigned to them, begin to spin, and the center does not hold, because we search for it outside instead of in.

  When the Lama appears, he seems glad of our visit, though we lack the gift of a kata, or ceremonial white scarf, that is customary on such occasions. He is an imposing man with the long hawk nose and carved cheekbones of a Plains Indian; his skin is a dark reddish copper, his teeth are white, his long black hair tied up in a braid, and he wears an old leather jacket with brass buttons, patched with burlap homespun of strange colors. When talking, he sits with legs crossed, barefoot, but puts on ancient laceless shoes when he moves around; in the doorway belund him hangs a wolf skin that he wears about his waist, indoors, to warm his back. Now he relates his history to Jang-bu, whose halting translation is more or less as follows:

  Karma Tupjuk was born fifty-two years ago of Tibetan parents in the region of Manang, a Tibetan town on the northern slopes of Annapurna. At this time, the Lama of Shey, Tuptok Sang Hisay, had been dead for several years, and as he had been a tulku — that is, the reincarnation of his predecessor—the people of Dolpo were on the lookout for the new tulku, who usually turns up within a few years of the death, not as the same flesh and blood, but in the way that a live flame is passed to a new candle. Those sent in search turned up eventually at Takang, in Manang, near the pilgrim shrine at Muktinath, where water, air, and earth burn in strange fire. Hearing of a boy who claimed to be the tulku, the searchers put him to such tests as the unhesitating selection of the dead man's personal effects—cups, clothes, religious objects, and the like—from a series of nearly identical objects belonging to others. When Tupjuk had satisfied them that he was indeed the tulku whom they sought, they declared him such, and took him away to Shey, but since he was only eight years old, he returned each year to Manang for religious instruction from his brother, the Lama Pamawongal.