The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  All around, the sun fires the summits, yet these steep valleys are so shut away from light that on this trail above the Suli Gad we walk for two hours in dim daybreak shadow. Here and there wild roses gather in clear pale-yellow bloom, and a flight of snow pigeons wheek up and down over the canyon far below; we look in vain for tahr or other creatures on the slopes across the valley. Wildlife has been scarce all along the way, with no sign at all of exotic animals such as the moon bear and red panda.

  The trail meets the Suli Gad high up the valley, in grottoes of bronze-lichened boulders and a shady riverside of pine and walnut and warm banks of fern. Where morning sun lights the red leaves and dark still conifers, the river sparkles in the forest shadow; turquoise and white, it thunders past spray-shined boulders, foaming pools, in a long rocky chute of broken rapids. In the cold breath of the torrent, the dry air is softened by mist; under last night's stars this water trickled through the snows. At the head of the waterfall, downstream, its sparkle leaps into the air, leaps at the sun, and sun rays are tumbled in the waves that dance against the snows of distant mountains.

  Upstream, in the inner canyon, dark silences are deepened by the roar of stones. Something is listening, and I listen, too: who is it that intrudes here? Who is breathing? I pick a fern to see its spores, cast it away, and am filled in that instant with misgiving: the great sins, so the Sherpas say, are to pick wild flowers and to threaten children. My voice murmurs its regret, a strange sound that deepens the intrusion. I look about me—who is it that spoke? And who is listening? Who is this ever-present "I" that is not me?

  The voice of a solitary bird asks the same question.

  Here in the secrets of the mountains, in the river roar, I touch my skin to see if I am real; I say my name aloud and do not answer.

  By a dark wall of rock, over a rivulet, a black-and-gold dragonfly zips and glistens; a walnut falls on a mat of yellow leaves. I wonder if anywhere on earth there is a river more beautiful than the upper Suli Gad in early fall. Seen through the mist, a water spirit in monumental pale gray stone is molded smooth by its mantle of white water, and higher, a ribbon waterfall, descending a cliff face from the east, strikes the wind sweeping upriver and turns to mist before striking the earth; the mist drifts upward to the rim, forming a halo in the guarding pines.

  Leaving the stream, the trail climbs steeply through the trees, then down again under the rock of a dripping grotto, a huge cave of winds. Beyond rises a grassy hill set about with red cotoneaster berries and the yellows, blues, and whites of alpine flowers, and above the hill, like an ice castle set atop a nearer peak, soars Kanjiroba. In twilight, the path descends again to the upper Suli, where camp is made beside the roaring water. We shout to one another and cannot be heard; we move about like shades in the dark canyon.

  OCTOBER 22

  At dawn on this east side of the canyon, the ground is frozen, making a ringing sound under the stave, and ice slivers glimmer in the brooks that flow into the torrent. Moving upright in near darkness, we find a bear's nest in a hackberry—our first sign of the Asiatic black bear, called the "moon bear." The bear sits in the branches and bends them toward him as he feeds on the cherry-like fruits; the broken branches make a platform which the bear may then use as a bed. In a corner of this nest, a blue rock dove—the wild ancestor of the street pigeon—has late-October young, as yet unfledged. We make a bear's breakfast of wild berries touched by frost.

  A forest of dead pines, dank river caves, and hearths of travelers; two caves are fitted with wood shelves, as if these places had been hermit habitations. The shelves are marked with the swastika, that archaic symbol of creation that occurs everywhere around the world except south of the Sahara and in Australia. It was taken to North America by the ancestors of the American aborigines; in the Teutonic cultures, it was the emblem of Thor; it appeared at Troy and in ancient India, where it was adopted by Hindus, then Buddhists. The reversed swastika is also here, in sign of the B'on religion, still prevalent in old corners of these mountains; since it reverses time, it is thought to be destructive to the universe, and is often associated with black magic.

  Faint musical cries ring through the trees above the water noise. In the dim fight, I cannot find the caller, and walk on. He calls again, and now I see him, in a small woodland grove across the river; he is a settler, cutting the wild grass for winter hay. I am glad to see him, yet sad that he is here; even this wild region of the Suli Gad will disappear. Because we cannot speak over the river, we merely smile, and he puts his sickle down and lifts his hands, placing his palms together in simple greeting. I do the same; we bow, and turn away.

  Near a fork where a tributary stream flows down from the B'on village at Pung-mo, the deep forest across the torrent has been parted by avalanche, and on this brushy slope, a dark shape jumps behind a boulder. The slope is in bright morning sun, but I glimpse the creature only for an instant. It is much too big for a red panda, too covert for a musk deer, too dark for wolf or leopard, and much quicker than a bear. With binoculars, I stare for a long time at the mute boulder, feeling the presence of the unknown life behind it, but all is still, there is only the sun and morning mountainside, the pouring water.

  All day I wonder about that quick dark shape that hid behind the rock, so wary of a slight movement on the far side of a rushing torrent; for I was alone, and could not have been heard, and was all but invisible in the forest shades. In the list of Himalayan mammals, black bear and leopard seem the best choices, but no bear that I ever saw moved like this animal, and no leopard is a uniform dark red or brown. Could it have been a melanistic leopard—a "black panther"? But I have seen leopards many times in Africa, where the species is the same; in rough terrain of brush and boulders, the leopard is much less apt to spring for cover than to crouch, flatten, and withdraw.

  And so—though I shall assume it was a musk deer— it is hard to put away the thought of yeti. This forested ravine of the upper Suli Gad is comparable in altitude to the cloud forests of eastern Nepal that are thought to shelter "the man-thing of the snows"; so far as I know, no yeti have been reported from west of the Kali Gandaki, but in reference to a creature as rare and wary as the yeti is presumed to be, this may only mean that these northwestern mountains are far less populous, far less explored.

  At 10,800 feet, the canyon opens out into high valleys. A herd of the black shaggy oxen known as yak are moving down across a hillside of cut barley, preceded by a cold thin tink of bells; in these mountains, a faint bell is often a first sign of human presence. The lead animals, carrying packs, are decked out in red collars and bright tassels, and soon a man and wife come down the path in full Tibetan dress, the man in blanket, belted cloak, and baggy pants tucked into red wool boots tied around the calf, the woman in striped apron and black cloths.

  On a long slope, in buckwheat fields, is the settlement called Murwa, which takes its name from a kind of mountain millet. The Murwa folk are very clean by comparison to the people of Rohagaon, and their stone houses, yards, and fields are well ordered and well kept; they have red dogs and well-fed stock, and sell a few eggs and potatoes to Phu-Tsering. The sunny hillside is protected all around by snow peaks, and down the ligh wall to the west roars the great waterfall from Phoksumdo Lake, joining the Murwa stream to form the Suli. I am sorry we must march straight through this restful place in order to reach Phoksimido Lake before the evening.

  In a cold wind at the Murwa stream, we take off boots and pants and wade the current, which is strong and swift, over slick rocks. I hurry in the icy water, for my numb feet find no footing; suddenly I am plunging like a horse, on the brink of a frigid bath, or worse. Moving diagonally upstream, I make it safely after some bad moments and dry myself on a sunny rock, out of the wind.

  From Murwa there is a steep climb through scrub juniper and deodar cedar to a ridge at 12,500 feet— the natural dam that holds Phoksumdo Lake among the snow peaks. I am some distance ahead of GS when a man on horseback, crossing the ridge, demands
to know my destination. "Shey Gompa," I declare—the Crystal Monastery. "Shey!" he repeats doubtfully, looking behind him at the peaks to the northwest. He points toward the south and then at me. "Tarakot," I say, "Dhorpatan." Nodding, he repeats ''Dhorpatan." Probably he is going there, and is glad to learn that we have got across Jang La; I neglect to warn him that his pony will not make it.

  A boy and girl appear among the cedars. In her basket is a cask of goat cheese, and cheese wrapped in birch bark; she presents me with a bit, and I buy more, and out of the wind, on warm needles in the shelter of the evergreens, I eat it up, with half of a big raw radish from Rohagaon.

  From the forest comes the sound of bells, and horse hooves dancing on the granite: a man in clean cloak and new wool boots canters up on a pony with silver trappings. This horseman, too, demands to know my destination, and he, too, frowns to learn that it is Shey. With a slashing movement of his hand across his throat, he indicates the depth of snow, then rides off in a jangle of bright bells.

  Clouds loom on the mountains to the south; the cold wind nags me. Soon GS comes, having had the same report: he fears we may have trouble getting in. I nod, though what concerns me more is getting out. The snow already fallen at Kang La will not melt this late in the year, it can only deepen. To be trapped by blizzard on the far side of the Kang would be quite serious, since the food that remains cannot last more than two months.

  Northward, the ridge opens out in a pine pasture at 12,000 feet where a herd of yaks, like so many black rocks, lies grouped in the cold sun. The yak has been domesticated from wild herds that still occur in remote parts of Tibet. The female yak is called the bri, and her bushy-tailed, short-faced calf looks like a huge toy. Among these yaks are some yak-cattle hybrids, known asdzo. On the shaggy coats, the long hairs shine, stirred by the wind; one chews slow cud. Manure smell and finch twitterings, blue sky and snow: facing the cold wind from the south, the great animals gaze down across the cliff to where the Bauli Gad, descending from Phoksumdo, explodes from its narrow chute into two, then three broad waterfalls that gather again at the Murwa stream below.

  In the granite and evergreen beyond the yaks, a lake of turquoise glitters beneath the snow peaks of the Kanjirobas. I walk down slowly through the silent pines.

  A geologist would say that Phoksimido Tal, three miles long, a half-mile wide, and reputed to be near a half-mile in depth, was formed when an earthquake collapsed the mountain on this side of the high valley, blocking the river that comes down from the Kanjirobas at what is now the north end of the lake. But local tradition has a different explanation:

  When B'on was the great religion of the Land of B'od, of which this region was once part, there was a village where this lake now lies. In the eighth century, the great Buddhist saint Padma Sambhava, the "Lotus-Born," came to Phoksimido with the intent of vanquishing the mountain demons. To this end, he persecuted a B'on demoness who, fleeing his wrath, gave these villagers a priceless turquoise, making them promise not to reveal that she had passed this way. But Padma Sambhava caused the turquoise to be turned to dung, upon which the villagers, concluding that the demoness had tricked them, betrayed her whereabouts. In revenge, she wreaked upon them a disastrous flood that drowned the village beneath turquoise waters.18

  Be that as it may, B'on has persisted in this region, and there is a B'on monastery near Ringo-mo, a village at the eastern end of the lake that cannot differ much from the eighth-century village that vanished in the deluge. From a distance, Ring-mo looks like a fortress in a tale, for the walls are built up like battlements by winter brushwood stacked on the flat roofs. Sky-blue and cloud-white prayer flags fly like banners in the windy light, and a falling sun, pierced by the peaks, casts heraldic rays.

  From the pine forest comes a woodcutter in boots and homespun, uttering barbaric cries that go unanswered in the autumn air. I follow this moonstruck figure down the path toward two white entrance-stupas. The stupas, ringed and decorated in warm red, are fat and lopsided, like immense gingerbread houses, and it seems fitting that, nearby, a cave beneath a giant boulder is walled up with stones in which a small crooked wooden door has been inset. All about are red-gold shrubs—barberry, gooseberry, and rose—and a glistening of the last silver wisps of summer's caper blossoms. Beyond the stupas, protecting the walled town like a moat, is the Bauli torrent that falls down from Phoksimido. A bridge with flags crosses the torrent where it narrows to enter its mile-long chute down around the west end of the ridge to the great falls, and just above this bridge, in the roaring waters, is a boulder that was somehow reached by a believer, OM MANI PADME HUM has been carved there in mid-torret, as if to hurl this mantra down out of the Himalaya to the benighted millions on the Ganges Plain,

  Across the bridge, a third entrance-stupa is built in an arch over the path up to the town. There are snowdrifts under the north walls, and three immense black yaks stand there immobile. Beyond are small patches of barley and buckwheat, and potato, which came to these mountains in the nineteenth century. A small boy leads a team of dzo through the potatoes, hauling a crude harrow with wood blade; other children ride the harrow handles to keep the blade sunk in the flinty soil. In their wake, an old man, kneeling, scavenges stray potatoes with a hand hoe, though barely fit to manage his own body. Seeing a stranger, he offers a broken yellow smile by way of apology for his old age.

  On the village street stands a tall figure in a red cloak flung over a sheepskin vest that is black with grime; a lavender turban with tassels and once-colorful wool boots deck the extremities of this bandit, who hails me in a wolfish, leering way. Now pretty children run out, smiling, and a silent mastiff runs out, too, only to suffer a rude yank from its chain; its lean jowls curl in a canine smile of pain. Everyone in Ring-mo smiles, and keeping a sharp eye out, I smile, too.

  The rough brown buildings have wood doors and arches, and filthy Mongol faces, snot-nosed, wild, laugh at the strangers from the crooked windows. Strange, heavy thumpings come from an immense stone mortar: two girls strike the grain in turn with wood pestles four feet long, keeping time with rhythmic soft sweet grunts, and two carpenters hew rude pine planks with crude adzes. Among the raffish folk of Rip-mo, dirt is worn like skin, and the children's faces are round crusts of sores and grime. Both sexes braid their long hair into pigtails and wear necklaces of beads and dark bits of turquoise, silver, and bone, as well as small amulet packets of old string around their necks. The dress here is essentially Tibetan— cloaks, aprons, belts, and rep-striped woolen boots with yak-twine soles.

  Through Jang-bu, we question everyone about Kang La and Shey Gompa, as the crowd gives off that heartening smell of uncultivated peoples the world over, an earthy but not sour smell of sweat and fire smoke and the oil of human leather. Goats, a few sheep, come and go. Both men and women roll sheep wool on hand spindles, saying that blizzards have closed Kang La for the winter. On the roofs, culled buckwheat stacked for winter fodder has a bronze shine in the dying sun, and against a sunset wall, out of the wind, an old woman with clean hair turns her old prayer wheel, humming, humming.

  OCTOBER 23

  The Tamangs will turn back at Ring-mo, for they are not equipped for the Kang Pass. A goat has been found, and some wood flagons of chang to celebrate our weeks together, and they butcher this billy goat with glee. The Sherpas don't participate in the taking of its life, but they will be happy to help eat it

  In early afternoon, bearing away the goat's head and forequarters and five bellyfuls of chang, Pirim and his companions cross the torrent and go chattering uphill, past the cake-colored stupas, to vanish among the sunny pines; freed of their loads, they fairly dance. And though I smile to see the way they go, I feel a sinking of the spirit.

  Tukten is our sole remaining porter, and he will be paid henceforth as a sherpa, as he is much too valuable to lose. The decision to keep Tukten on was mine, as despite his ambiguous reputation I find him the most intelligent and helpful of our men; also, I feel that in some way he brings me luck.
He will go with me in case I depart from Shey before GS, for Dawa and Gyaltsen speak no English whatsoever, and GS will need both Jang-bu and Phu-Tsering.

  A wind out of the north is cold, but behind the high stone walls of the stock compound where the tents are pitched, the sun is warm. Despite all the reports of heavy snow, we have decided against using yaks, which can plow through new snow up to their bellies but are soon immobilized by ice and crusts. And so Jang-bu is organizing a new lot of porters, who are demanding twenty-five rupees a day. Already these noisy fellows lay the groundwork for malingering at the Kang Pass—''What will you pay us if we must turn back?" They say two days are needed to prepare food and patch their clothes, and one man has been all day in our compound, sewing hard gray wool from a spindle whorl (much like the one used by the Hopi) into his calf-high woolen boots, and meditating on our gear the while.

  All but the porters have lost interest in us quickly, now that it's clear just how and where the money will be made. In costumes, attitudes, and degree of filth, these Ring-mos cannot have changed much from the eighth-century inhabitants who betrayed the demoness when her turquoise turned to dung. At this season, they live mostly on potatoes, ignoring the autumn bounty of wild fruit that is everywhere around the village. Down by the stream, I persuade two girls to try the gooseberries that grow there. The children are suspicious, tantalized, astonished; in their delight, they stare at each other, then begin to laugh.

  While GS climbs the mountainside in search of bharal, I explore the stupas and the town. Even to my untutored eye, the ancient frescoes on the stupa walls, and the ceiling mandalas especially, seem intricate and well designed, for the culture of this region was formerly more vital than it is today. The dominant colors are red ochers, blues, and whites, but yellow and green are also used for certain Buddha aspects and manifestations. The confusion of Buddha figures is compounded here because B'on still prevails, despite the eighth-century inundation of the B'on villagers beneath Phoksumdo. At Ring-mo, Sakyamuni is called Shen-rap, and the faithful swing their prayer wheels left about and circumambulate prayer walls and stupas with left shoulder to the monument instead of right. The swastikas here in the maia stupa are reversed, and the prayer stones bear such B'on inscriptions as OM MATRI MUYE SA LE DU ("In clarity unite"),19 said to derive from the language of Sh'ang Sh'ung, the mysterious kingdom of western Tibet where, according to B'on-pos, the great B'on teachings usurped by the Buddhists first appeared.