Field science and spiritual longing in the same paragraph.
The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen journeys into the Himalayas with a wildlife biologist, searching for an elusive leopard and a way through his grief.
263g
Weighs the same as Battery Pack + Balaclava
- Luxury Item
- Legends Only
- Changes the Way You See
- Nature / Memoir
In 1973 Peter Matthiessen walked 250 miles into the Nepalese Himalaya with field biologist George Schaller, who hoped to photograph a snow leopard. Matthiessen’s wife had just died of cancer, and he was a student of Zen looking, as he put it, to “go empty into the mountains and see what happens.” They never saw the leopard. Here is an indelible rendering of a trek — field science and spiritual longing in the same paragraph. If you want to go on a journey on your journey, this is the one.
Field notes
Matthiessen later described the composition of The Snow Leopard as his Zen practice. Having parted with his original teacher, he spent years writing, meditating, and studying the material gathered in his Himalayan journals. The journey itself supplied a captivating structure: ascending into the mountains as winter approached, then descending toward warmer valleys, where the seasons seemed to run backward.