The Snow Leopard

Read this, and read it again. The language is so precise and nuanced. It was a pleasure to read. Matthiessen recounts his journey, literally and figuratively, in the most captivating way. You will feel that you have been to Tibet, and you won't want the journey to end. So re-read it.

The story is vey interesting , but to read a language that is not mine I think the english was to detailed and difficult to comprihend. Normalt I have no problem with reading english. But the story is amazing!!

Nepal for sure has changed since then but this report
somehow trascends the period in which was written
as it covers the journey of the soul and the trekking
in the mountains for wild places which can be thought
"somewhere" to be the same of always

I found this book very helpful when I was changing my life and moving into a new phase. It wasn't a how to guide, many of which I was reading at the time, but through Peter's way of talking about his travels it helped me reflect on mine. A beautiful book, and I've given copies to all my close friends.

Luminous writing . His journey endeared me to Peter as a deeply human(and flawed) being & incorrigible seeker. Ultimately realizing on the trip there is nothing to accomplish- only one step at a time thru grief, terror, exhaustion, & completion.

Wonderful spiritual and physical adventure story. The author did a great job of entertwining the two. I will definitely reread this book and seek out more by this author. At play in the fields of the lord was also quite good. I would have liked a bigger more detailed map to follow the trek.

I bought this book based on the customer reviews before me which were very favorable for this book. So I purchased it. I have to admit, this type of book is a stretch for me anyway because this is not a typical book I would read, if that makes sense. Anyway, my problem with it is that the book is highly marked by Buddhist concepts, practices, words, rituals, definitions...you get the idea. While that is not an entirely bad thing....it is if those overall concepts do not resonate with the reader...as they did not with me. It made for an aching read for me. Definitely not a keeper for my library.

I greatly enjoyed 'The Snow Leopard,' enough to earn it a rare five-star rating from me.

First, the book is, in my opinion, very well-written from a purely literary perspective, with fluid, textured, and poignant prose throughout, as to capture perfectly the Himalaya mountains in which the author so mercilessly trekked. However, the highlight for me was the rampant and profound truths interspersing the text. I can confidently say: many of the spiritual nuggets expressed in 'The Snow Leopard' are, in my experience, quite accurate, such that the attuned reader is much rewarded in this regard. Furthermore, my experience of these truths was done independently, and preexisting to my reading the book, thus lending an air of validation and authenticity, of a kind which touched me as few books can. Of course, this bonus was purely subjective to myself, and might not apply to any other reader; all the same, it dampened my enjoyment of this great work no less. (Though, even the most spiritually detached of readers should be able to appreciate the book's overarching story, as well as the sheer effort entailed in its creation, it being the product of a real, firsthand journey that few would attempt, at risk of extreme discomfort or death.)

My heartfelt thanks goes out to this book's author, subjects, and publisher. I am grateful for your work and service.

This blends memoir with history, travel with insight. He presents Zen Buddhism filtered through a keen eye and a sympathetic voice as it meets Tibetan dharma. This occurs amidst magnificent landscapes and terrifying scenery.

I remembered "Snow" as sharing with another narrative back enjoyed back then which I've returned to (and reviewed in early 2011), Andrew Harvey's "A Journey in Ladakh," a "drop-off" scene where all the noise vanished, as if a silent passage in a film, and a mystical experience unfolded on the page, floating into my mind. But, in "Snow," this time I failed to find it. It may be that my intervening reading, especially the past few years, in Buddhist studies has eased me into other accounts, so "Snow"'s impact was muffled, but in following Matthiessen through the Himalayas again, I enjoyed his trek, forty-five days at the end of 1973. He and a naturalist companion with their porters and guides trudged over the Nepal plain, up the river trails over into Inner Dolpo's enclave of a widely demolished (by the Chinese) or eroding (as Colin Thubron's companionable "To a Mountain in Tibet" documents recently; see my review) native culture where it perches on the edge of the Land of B'od, that land's vast plateau.

The spiritual side contends with the physical rigor. Matthiessen deftly balances his personal story with his wife's recent death from cancer serving as a poignant counterweight to his own adventure. The title seems to imply an adventure into the animal world, but as you will find, this symbolizes more than represents an actual encounter, which makes the quest to see the leopard even more engaging. Meanwhile, the mountains abide, as his Zen koan "why do the mountains have snow, but this peak is bare" appropriately accompanies his journey into his soul as he wrestles with the needs of the body and of the spirit equally.

He struggles to an understanding of the unity of all existence, he faces despair and disgust at his impatience and irritability, and he seeks hope. In a way, a very simple story, imaginatively told and magnificently rendered. While I wish photographs were included (all I had with the hardcover was one image I imagine of Shey Gompa, the monastery at the foot of the Crystal Mountain, their long-sought destination where the blue sheep gather near the snow leopard's haunts), their lack may push the reader into an inner imagining of the scenes captured so well in Matthiessen's sinewy, self-aware, disciplined prose. Like his mystical musings, the mountains and ravines, the terrible cold and isolating snow, the intense sun and the eerie atmosphere all combine into a memorable presentation of a man's search in the most remote and severe of habitations, where people live three miles high.

But often his chapters skip about, being drawn from his journals kept with frozen hands. He never shies away from his own delusions and his passions, as the intellectual heft and idealistic mission within Matthiessen's countercultural ambitions contend. He blends autobiography and anthropology, if from a post-Carlos Casteneda tone at times, given this work's shamanistic genesis and hallucinogenic sympathies.

He sums up famously challenging Buddhist philosophies and regimens. He combines a love for the natural world with a respect for the lonely path of those who share his need for beauty and clarity within some of the most rugged landscapes that Asia offers. Matthiessen's discipline nourishes his writing, which keeps remarkably sleek and supple, while it also helps readers come closer to his own rather formidable commitment to master mountaineering and Zen, both short paths up steep slopes to vistas of wonder. (P.S. See my 3-2012 review of his companion, naturalist George Schaller, who tells his side of the Shey pilgrimage and much more as they seek the snow leopard, in "Stones of Silence.")

At the beginning of Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (Scribner Classics) there is an epigraph that states that the Masai call the western summit of this mountain the "House of God." Moreover, Hemingway says that the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard was found there, and concluded with the subject line. I first read this work of Hemingway's in the `60's, which commenced a fascination with that mountain. And when Peter Matthiessen's book on leopards whose normal habitation is at such altitudes came out in the late `70's, it was an obligatory read.

Matthiessen linked up with the noted naturalist and author, George Schaller, whose works include The Year of the Gorilla and The Last Panda The year was 1973, a remote area of Nepal, the Dolpo area, which is actually part of the Tibetan plateau, had just opened to foreigners for exploration and trekking, and so the two commenced a journey which, in part, was to find this most elusive creature of the book's title. So, the book is definitely a travelogue into a unique region along the "roof of the world," long before one could make all the arrangements "on-line." Matthiessen writes well, and can instill an essential sense of "AWE," in a reader for sights and experiences he has never seen or felt. And with the ever observant Schaller along, it is a journey in good company.

But the book is much more than that, as the sub-title indicates: "It is a spiritual odyssey of a man in search of himself," with motivations perhaps not much different that Hemingway's leopard. So, the majority of the book is Matthiessen's ruminations on why we live, and what our place is in the greater scheme of things, as the expression has it. As an example: "Perhaps this dread of transience explains our greed for the few gobbets of raw experience in modern life, why violence is libidinous, why lust devours us, why soldiers choose not to forget their days of horror: we cling to such extreme moments, in which we seem to die, yet are reborn. In sexual abandon as in danger we are impelled, however briefly, into that vital present in which we do not stand apart from life, we are life, our being fills us; in ecstasy with another being loneliness falls away into eternity. But in other days, such union was attainable through simple awe."

Matthiessen is a Buddhist, and became one long before flirtations with eastern religions came into vogue. Although there are some notable exceptions in its practice (like the Burmese generals, for example), of all the major religions of the world, Buddhism is the most gentle in its practice, and so it is an odyssey that I can at least tag along on. But at some point, for me, it turns into embracing uncritically some other person's "mumbo-jumbo." A big red flag arose when the author discussed the work of "mystic-philosopher" George Gurdjieff, famous for Meetings with Remarkable Men and others, and whom I consider to be the quintessential purveyor of new age hocus-pocus.

As for that ever elusive snow leopard, and its motivations, Schaller covers gorillas and pandas in far more detail in his other works. You also have a wonderful travelogue into an area at the "beginning of (travel) time." As for the spiritual odyssey, a leavening of skepticism towards the purported wisdom of the east is much more in order. 4-stars.

The SNOW LEOPARD - Interesting descriptions of Tibet back country and customs but author constantly contradicts himself, he seems disoriented like he might have done too many drugs in his life, imagine that, he is a self admitted psychedelic user and he writes like it. Matthiessen demeans his Sherpas while intimating some sense of loss at leaving his 8-year-old son at home one year after his wife died while he treks around Tibet for two months, inexcusable!