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The Snow Leopard: Peter Matthiessen

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Chapter 46: Joining up the Spots: Aligning Approaches to Big Cat Conservation from Policy to the Field

Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form. . . the cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center.” Despite a few more forays into the spiritual journey, the expedition and scientific research parts of the book are much more heavily featured in the following chapters.We observe Matthiessen and how he relates to Schaller. We observe also Matthiessen’s relationship with Tukten, a man he comes to respect and rely on thoroughly. He was originally employed to bear provisions. A bond of kinship develops between the two. This is interesting to note, given that Tukten was frowned upon, viewed by some as an unreliable drunk. I admire Tukten for his ability to stay calm. He became a role model for not only Matthiessen but also for me. Each reader must judge for himself. Due to their large paws and elongated hind legs, the ability of snow leopards to jump is highly developed, as well as their ability to climb. They prefer to rest upon elevated structures, especially when they are kept in captivity. The rarity of sightings of snow leopards in the wild suggests that they reduce their activity around areas where humans are present. ( Hemmer, 1972; Wolf and Ale, 2009) Stunning . . . Fiercely felt and magnificently written . . . [Matthiessen] has expressed with uncommon candor and no prospect of relief, a longing which keeps the soul striving and alert in us all.”— Washington Post John Gatta, Storrs (2004). Making Nature Sacred. Oxford University Press. p.191. ISBN 0198036949 . Retrieved 21 June 2014.

For two months of 1973, from late September to late November, Matthiessen joined zoologist George Schaller on a journey from the Nepalese Himalayas to the Tibetan Plateau to study Himalayan blue sheep. Both also harbored a hope of spotting the elusive snow leopard. Rieger, I. 1984. Tail functions in ounces, Uncia uncia. Intl. Ped. Book of Snow Leopards, 4: 85-97.Schaller, G., R. Junrang, Q. Mingjiang. 1988. Status of the snow leopard Panthera uncia in Qinghai and Gansu provinces, China. Biological Conservation, 45(3): 179-194. I don't want it to seem like I didn't enjoy this book. I did. You do get a feel for how liberating, calming, centering, that it would be to walk out of the modern world to the cold and quiet mountains and let it all go…all the complications and illusions of life. He is a student of zen Buddhism and is trying to write a zen Buddhist book. I think if this were a different book I would like it better…but these people, this place…his attempt to be 'zen' all the time, it just feels detached and that we are missing lots of wonderful, dirty, complicated, vivid stuff. He isn't on a meditation retreat. He is walking through people's lives in living breathing communities and he barely seems to notice. At age 46, in 1973, Peter Matthiessen walked, with biologist George Schaller, from Kathmandu to the Crystal Mountain in Tibet and beyond. Matthiessen was a novice at this kind of extreme expedition, as who among us wouldn't be, yet turned in 10- and 12- hour days walking up and down icy, fragile, whip-thin mountain trails. Food was meagre. Boots caused blisters. Winds blew cold. Grief over personal matters was impossible to shake. Sergio, F., T. Caro, D. Brown, B. Clucas, J. Hunter, J. Ketchum, K. McHugh, F. Hiraldo. 2008. Top Predators as Conservation Tools: Ecological Rationale, Assumptions, and Efficacy. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 39: 1-19. He read the book in sequence with the retraced journey. Did it feel strange to read about his father missing him as a boy in those exact landscapes?

The snow leopard’s powerful build allows it to scale great steep slopes with ease. Its hind legs give the snow leopard the ability to leap six times the length of its body. A long tail enables agility, provides balance and wraps around the resting snow leopard as protection from the cold. And he makes it with a friend, crusty field biologist George Schaller, who is there to study Himalayan Blue Sheep. Matthiessen is crusty, too, actually; he doesn't project himself as a saint. They go with a number of sherpas and encounter a very few people along their way, though PM does actually meet the Lama of Shay.

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Lactation is five-months however the young can begin to eat solid food at two months of age, and are weaned at about 5 months. For roughly the first year of life, snow leopards are dependent upon their mother. Female snow leopards reach sexual maturity at about 2 to 3 years of age while males may take up to 4 years. ( Fox, 1989; Petzsch, 1968) For one thing, there was the semi-mystical possibility of sighting a snow leopard, the bharal’s predator, an animal seen by only a very few western travellers. There was also the chance to live for a while among the Dolpo Pa, the leathery mountain people who lived a “pure” form of Tibetan culture cut off from outside influence (Matthiessen, born into Wasp-ish east coast privilege, had already spent half a lifetime as a writer escaping it in search of remote indigenous tribes and landscapes untouched by man).But more than that, the journey to the Himalayas came at a moment in the writer’s life when his mind was desperate for clarity and, perhaps, solace. Christiansen, P., J. Harris. 2012. Variation in craniomandibular morphology and sexual dimorphism in Pantherines and the sabercat Smilodon fatalis. PLoS One, 7(10): e48352. 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. All journeys change us and teach us new things about other people and about ourselves. This book is written as if he knew it all before, the name of every bird, everything about the unique Buddhist traditions there, and also it seems that every animal, prayer stone, person and even every mountain was there just for him. Possibly this is quite an honest portrayal of our inner lives but it feels a little self absorbed.

Promoting coexistence through improved understanding of human perceptions, attitudes, and behavior toward snow leopards 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. Kind of comical, too, right? That some mate, any mate, might find that noise inviting? But we found it pretty transformative, as we did find the whales, and we saw, too, many many other species of animals and birds we dutifully recorded along the way. I started this book a few times in my twenties. It won the National Book Award in 1978, when I was first teaching, and I was not yet ready to read it. Or maybe, if I had gone “on the road” as Kerouac got a generation to do, one way or the other, I might have taken it with me then and actually read it. I tried on a few other occasions to get into it, and I couldn’t do it, for one reason or the other, but for some reason I always knew at some point it would be important for me to experience. Something like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it was a book for a time, highly influential, but this book is in my opinion a much better and richer book. But even then, having slow-read it over the month of my trip, it has still taken me months to get to writing about it. I warn you, this could go on for a while. I’m mostly writing it for myself, but you are welcome to come along for my (reading) journey. Freeman, H. 1983. Behavior in adult pairs of captive snow leopards Panthera uncia. Zoo Biology, 2: 1-22.Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterrupted experience in which body, mind, and nature and the same.” (42) Matthiessen, equally adept at fiction and non-fiction, in The Snow Leopard writes the book of his life. He’s on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas a year after his wife is dead, leaving his eight-year-old son behind with family as he seeks at least two things: A glimpse of the rare and the presumedly soon-to-be-extinct Snow Leopard, and a visit with the Lama of Shay at the Crystal Mountain, where few westerners have dared venture. As I said, he’s a Zen Buddhist (something I did in the seventies casually study as one life alternative, as I eased slowly but inexorably out of my Dutch Reformed Christian upbringing), and this is a time in his life he wants/needs to make this quest, this journey. Ognev, S. 1935. Mammals of U.S.S.R. and adjacent countries. Vol III Carnivora (English translation 1962, Israel Program for Scientific Translations), 1: 1-656.

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