The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  At a rest wall, two figs of different species were planted long ago; one is a banyan, or nigrodha ( Ficus indica), the other a pipal (F. religiosa), sacred to both the Hindus and the Buddhists. Wild flowers and painted stones are set among the buttressed roots, to bring the traveler good fortune, and stone terraces are built up aroimd the trunks in such a way that the shade-seeking traveler may back up and set down his load while standing almost straight. These resting places are everywhere along the trading routes, some of them so ancient that the great trees have long since died, leaving two roimd holes in a stonework oval platform. Like the tea houses and the broad stepping-stones that are built into the hills, the rest walls impart a blessedness to this landscape, as if we had wandered into a lost country of the golden age.

  Awaiting the line of porters that winds through the paddies, I sit on the top level of the wall, my feet on the step on which the loads are set and my back against a tree. In dry sunshine and the limpid breeze down from the mountains, two black cows are threshing rice, flanks gleaming in the light of afternoon. First the paddy is drained and the rice sickled, then the yoked animals, tied by a long line to a stake in the middle of the rice, are driven round and round in a slowly decreasing circle while children fling the stalks beneath their hooves. Then the stalks are tossed into the air, and the grains beneath swept into baskets to be taken home and winnowed. The fire-colored dragonflies in the early autumn air, the bent backs in bright reds and yellows, the gleam on the black cattle and wheat stubble, the fresh green of the paddies and the sparkling river—over everything lies an immortal light, like transparent silver.

  In the clean air and absence of all sound, of even the simplest machinery—for the track is often tortuous and steep, and fords too many streams, to permit bicycles—in the warmth and harmony and seeming plenty, come whispers of a paradisal age. Apparently the grove of sal trees called Lumbini, only thirty miles south of this same tree, in fertile lands north of the Rapti River, has changed little since the sixth century B.C., when Siddhartha Gautama was born there to a rich clan of the Sakya tribe in a kingdom of elephants and tigers. Gautama forsook a life of ease to become a holy mendicant, or "wanderer"—a common practice in northern India even today. Later he was known as Sakyamuni (Sage of the Sakyas), and afterward, the Buddha—the Awakened One. Fig trees and the smoke of peasant fires, the greensward and gaunt cattle, white egrets and jungle crows are still seen on the Ganges Plain where Sakyamuni passed his life, from Lumbini south and east to Varanasi (an ancient city even when Gautama came there) and Rajgir and Gaya. Tradition says that he traveled as far north as Kathmandu (even then a prosperous city of the Newars) and preached on the hill of Swayambhunath, among the monkeys and the pines.

  In Sakyamimi's time, the disciplines called yogas were already well evolved. Perhaps a thousand years before, the dark-skinned Dravidians of lowland India had been overcome by nomad Aryans from the Asian steppes who were bearing their creed of sky gods, wind, and light across Eurasia.2 Aryan concepts were contained in their Sanskrit Vedas, or knowledge— ancient texts of unknown origin which include the Rig Veda and the Upanishads and were to become the base of the Hindu religion. To the wandering ascetic named Sakyamuni, such epic preachments on the nature of the Universe and Man were useless as a cure for human suffering. In what became known as the Four Noble Truths, Sakyamuni perceived that mans existence is inseparable from sorrow; that the cause of suffering is craving; that peace is attained by extinguishing craving; that this liberation may be brought about by following the Eight-fold Path: right attention to one's understanding, intentions, speech, and actions; right livelihood, effort, mindfulness; right concentration, by which is meant the unification of the self through sitting yoga.

  The Vedas already included the idea that mortal desire—since it implies lack—had no place in the highest state of being; that what was needed was that death-in-life and spiritual rebirth sought by all teachers, from the early shamans to the existentialists. Sakyamuni's creed was less a rejection of Vedic philosophy than an effort to apply it, and his intense practice of meditation does not content itself with the serenity of yoga states (which in his view falls short of ultimate truth) but goes beyond, until the transparent radiance of stilled mind opens out in prajna, or transcendent knowing, that higher consciousness or "Mind" which is inherent in all sentient beings, and which depends on the unsentimental embrace of all existence. A true experience of prajna corresponds to "enlightenment" or liberation—not change, but transformation— a profound vision of his identity with universal life, past, present, and future, that keeps man from doing harm to others and sets him free from fear of birth-and-death.

  In the fifth century B.C., near the town of Gaya, south and east of Varanasi, Sakyamuni attained enlightenment in the deep experience that his own "true nature," his Buddha-nature, was no different from the nature of the universe. For half a century thereafter, at such places as the Deer Park in Sarnath, and Nalanda, and the Vulture's Peak near present-day Rajgir, he taught a doctrine based upon the impermanence of individual existence, the eternal continuity of becoming, as in the morning river that appears the same as the river of the night before, now passed away.

  (Though he preached to women and weakened the caste system by admitting low-born brethren to his order, Sakyamuni never involved himself in social justice, far less government; his way holds that seLf-realization is the greatest contribution one can make to one's fellow man.) At the age of eighty, he ended his days at Kusinagara (the modern Kusinara), forty miles east of Gorakhpur and just west of the Kali Candaki River.

  This much is true; all else is part of the great Buddha legend, which is truth of a different order. In regard to his enlightenment, it is related that this wanderer was in his thirties when he gave up the rigors of the yogi and embraced the "Middle Path" between sensuality and mortification, accepting food in a golden bowl from the daughter of the village headman. Thereupon, he was renounced by his disciples. At dusk he sat himself beneath a pipal tree with his face toward the East, vowing that though his skin and nerves and bones should waste away and his life-blood dry, he would not leave this seat until he had attained Supreme Enlightenment. All that night, beset by demons, Sakyamimi sat in meditation. And in that golden daybreak, it is told, the Self-Awakened One truly perceived the Morning Star, as if seeing it for the first time in his life.

  In what is now known as Bodh Gaya—still a pastoral land of cattle savanna, shimmering water, rice paddies, palms, and red-clay hamlets without paved roads or wires—a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or ''Enlightenment Tree," beneath which this man sat. Here in a warm dawn, ten days ago, with three Tibetan monks in maroon robes, I watched the rising of the Morning Star and came away no wiser than before. But later I wondered if the Tibetans were aware that the bodhi tree was murmuring with gusts of birds, while another large pipal, so close by that it touched the holy tree with many branches, was without life. I make no claim for this event: I simply declare what I saw there at Bodh Gaya.

  Already the Yamdi Khola narrows; soon it will vanish among mountains. In a village on the northern slope, the huts are round or oval rather than rectangular, and Jang-bu, the head sherpa, says that this is a village of the Gurung, a people who came down long ago out of Tibet. In this region of southern Nepal live various hill peoples of Mongol and Aryan mix, most of them Paharis, or hill Hindus. For centuries, the Hindus have come up along the river valleys from the great plain of the Ganges, while Tibetans crossed the mountain passes from the north: the Tibetan-spealdng Buddhist tribes, which include the Sherpas, are called Bhotes, or southern Tibetans. (Bhot or Bod is Tibet; Bhutan, which lies at the southern edge of Tibet, means "End of Bhot.") Of the tribes represented by the porters, the Gurungs and Tamangs tend toward Buddhism, while the Chetris and Magars are Hindus. Whether Hindu or Buddhist, most of these tribes—and the Gurung especially—pay respect to the animist deities of die old religions that persist in remote corners of t
he Asian mountains.

  Some long-haired Tibetans, buttery flat faces red with ocher sheen, descend the river barefoot on the silver stones. (Ocher is a traditional protection against cold and insects, and before the civilizing influence of Buddhism, Tibet was known as the Land of the Red-faced Devils.) These people are bound for Pokhara from Dhorpatan, a week away. When crops are harvested, the Tibetans, Mustang Bhotes, and other hill peoples follow the ridges and valleys south and east to Pokhara and Kathmandu, trading wool and salt for grain and paper, knives, tobacco, rice, and tea. One Tibetan boy has caught a rockfish in the shallows; he runs to show me, almond eyes agleam. The children all along the way are friendly and playful, even gay; though they beg a little, they are not serious about it, as are the grim Hindu children of the towns. More likely they will take your hand and walk along a little, or do a somersault, or tag and run away.

  Where the valley narrows to a canyon, there is a tea house and some huts, and here a pack train of shaggy Mongol ponies descends from the mountain in a melody of bells and splashes across the swift green water at the ford. From the tea house, a trail climbs steeply toward the southwest sky. In this land, the subsistence economies have always depended upon travel, and in its decades—centuries, perhaps—as a trade route for the hill peoples, broad steps have been worn into the mountain path. Wild chestnut trees overhang the trail; we pull down branches to pick the spiny nuts.

  At sunset, the trail arrives at the hill village called Naudanda. Here I try out my new home, a one-man mountain tent, in poor condition. Phu-Tsering, our merry cook, in bright red cap, brings supper of lentils and rice, and afterward I sit outside on a wicker stool acquired at the tea house at the ford, and listen to cicadas and a jackal. This east-west ridge falls steeply on both sides to the Yamdi Valley in the north, the Marsa in the south; from Naudanda, the Yamdi Khola is no more than a white ribbon rushing down between dark walls of conifers into its gorge. Far away eastward, far below, the Marsa River opens out into Lake Phewa, near Pokhara, which glints in the sunset of the foothills. There are no roads west of Pokhara, which is the last outpost of the modern world; in one day's walk we are a century away.

  SEPTEMBER 29

  A luminous mountain morning. Mist and fire smoke, Sun shafts and dark ravines: a peak of Annapurna poises on soft clouds. In fresh light, to the peeping of baby chickens, we take breakfast in the village tea house, and are under way well before seven.

  A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment—it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that Hes here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something—a new life?— yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice—"Namas-te!"—a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you."

  We are subdued by this reminder of mortality. I think of the corpse in Gorkha Country, borne on thin shoulders in the mountain rain, the black cloths blowing; I see the ancient dying man outside Pokhara; I hear again my own wife's final breath. Such sights caused Sakyamuni to forsake Lumbini and go in search of the secret of existence that would free men from the pain of this sensory world, known as samsara.

  Grieve not for me, but mourn for those who stay behind, bound by longings to which the fruit is sorrow . . . for what confidence have we in life when death is ever at hand? .. . Even were I to return to my kindred by reason of affection, yet we should be divided in the end by death. The meeting and parting of living things is as when clouds having come together drift apart again, or as when the leaves are parted from the trees. There is nothing we may call our own in a union that is but a dream. . . .3

  And yet, as his own death drew near, Sakyamnni turned again toward the north ("Come, Ananda, let us go to Kusinagara"). Like the rest of us, perhaps ho longed for home.

  The path tends west around small mountains, then climbs toward a village in the pass. Where a white vulture sails in the sunny mist, a high forest comes in view, threaded by waterfalls. We are escorted through the village by a boy playing a tom-tom; he wears a saucy hat, short shirt, and vest, and nothing more. One day this boy and others will destroy that forest, and their steep fields will erode in rain, and the thin soil will wash away into the torrents, clogging the river channels farther down so that monsoon floods will spread across the land. With its rapidly increasing population, primitive agriculture, and steep terrain, Nepal has the most serious erosion problem of any country in the world, and the problem worsens as more forests disappear in the scorning of the land for food and fuel; in eastern Nepal, and especially the Kathmandu Valley, firewood for cooking (not to speak of heat) is already precious, brought in by peasants who have walked for many miles to sell the meager faggots on their backs. The country folk cook their own food by burning cakes of livestock dung, depriving the soil of the precious manure that would nourish it and permit it to hold water. Without wood humus or manure, the soil deteriorates, compacts, and turns to dust, to be washed away in the rush of the monsoon.

  In GS's view, Asia is fifteen to twenty years behind East Africa in its attitudes toward conservation, and the gap may well prove fatal All of the region from western India to Turkey, and all of northern Africa as well, has turned to desert in historic times, and yet a country such as Pakistan, with but 3 percent of its territories left in forest, is doing nothing at all about the impending disaster, despite a huge idle standing army—sponsored, of course, by military-industrial interests in the United States—that could just as well be out in the weary countryside planting new trees.

  Pine, rhododendron, barberry. Down mountain fields, a path of stones flows like mercury in the sunlight; even the huts have roofs of silver slates. The path winds around the mountain to the bottom of the pine forest, where a shady hamlet overlooks the confluence of the Modir River with its tributary from the north. This is the way of foot travel in Nepal, steeply up and steeply down the labyrinthine valleys. The down is hardest on the legs and feet, which jam at the knees and into the toe of the boot. In Kathmandu, our youngest sherpa, Gyaltsen, had taken my mountain boots to a cobbler to have them stretched; unstretched, the boots came back with neat round patches of bright leather sewn onto the outside surfaces at the indicated points. The patches were removed in Pokhara, but the cobbler there had no tool to stretch the boots, and so they are just as narrow and—due to perforations—less rainworthy than before.

  Today we have been walking for ten hours; there are signs of blisters. Gyaltsen, who is carrying my backpack, is somewhere far behind, and since I have no sneakers in my rucksack, I walk barefoot. My feet are still tough from the past summer, and the paths are mostly rain-softened, for we have descended once again into a lowland. Eyes to the ground, alert for sticks and stones, I can admire a cocoa-colored wood frog and the pale lavender-blue winged blossoms of the orchid tree (Bauhinia) and the warm loaf left by a buffalo, deposited calmly from the look of it and even, perhaps, in contemplation.

  But since the encounter with the crawling child, I look at paradise askance. Along the Modir, my feet are hurt by sharp rock shale, and where we make camp in the village of Gijan, we pick off leeches: while taking rice supper in a local hut, GS investigates wetness in his sneaker and finds it full of his own blood.

  It relieves me that GS is mortal, prey to the afflictions of the common pilgrim. I am an inspired walker, but he is formidable; were it not for the slow pace of the porters, he would run me into the ground. GS's strong legs are so crucial to his work in the high mountains of the world that he w
ill not ski or play rough sports for fear he might do them damage. I tease him now about his bloody shoe, quoting a letter from the curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (in regard to a set of mousetraps for collecting purposes that I would bring to GS from America); "I look forward to learning what you and George see, hear, and accomplish in a march through Nepal I should warn you, the last friend I had who went walking with George in Asia came back—or more properly, turned back—when his boots were full of blood. . . ."

  "That chap was out of shape," GS says shortly.

  SEPTEMBER 30

  Yesterday we walked for eleven hours of rough up-and-down, and this morning the delicate porter who plays fig-leaf music has disappeared. Jang-bu, the head sherpa, replaces him in Gijan with an old Magar named Bimbahadur, a crook-legged veteran of the gurkha regiments who goes barefoot, in huge shorts. (Whether Hindu or Buddhist, a Nepalese who joins the regiments is called a "gurkha." The legend of these soldiers had its start in 1769, when the armies of the King of Gorkha spread out from the central valleys, absorbing the small tribal kingdoms and creating the Hindu state now called Nepal; in their great ferocity, they rushed into Tibet, only to be thrown back by the Chinese, who considered Tibet to be part of China even then. La the mid-nineteenth century, brandishing the wicked hatchet-knife known as the kukri, gurkha troops were sent to aid the British raj during the Indian mutiny, and gurkha regiments were later supported by both India and Britain.)

  Our Sherpa porter, Tukten, is also a gurkha veteran, and he and Bimbahadur are soon companions, since Tukten—perhaps because he took a porter's job, or for other reasons not yet clear—is kept at a subtle distance by the younger sherpas. Tukten might be thirty-five or fifty-three—his face is ageless—whereas Jang-bu, Phu-Tsering the cook, and the two camp assistants Gyaltsen and Dawa are all in their early twenties. In his knickers and high sneakers, Gyaltsen looks like a schoolboy and has in fact brought tattered schoolbooks with him.