In January 2021, I completed a very unique audiobook. It was a work of non-fiction, yet could have very well been a fictional odyssey. More than that, it is a real life example of a man living the principles of Zen in one of the most inhospitable places in the world, challenging himself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is an excellent metaphor for life. We all face challenges in our lives. We learn by those challenges and how we react to them. Like the author, none of us are perfect, yet if we continue trying, we too can become better versions of ourselves.
The Snow Leopard written by Peter Matthiessen records a journey in 1973, was written in 1978, an audio recording the author's own words was made in 2011 and then released in 2014. This is a story of an American biologist, his travel companion Peter Matthiessen, and their team of Sherpas who trekked on foot from Nepal over the Himalayas to Tibet during the onset of winter to observe the rituals of Tibetan blue sheep in the wild. While the biologist had a scientific reason to go, Matthiessen was on a different quest, as he was an explorer of remote regions, most interested in customs and the people who lived there.
Matthiessen and the Sherpas in the Himalayan mountains, likely at an altitude of 16,000 feet.
There are more than a few articles and reviews on the book as it is very popular. I enjoyed it very much, so much I began taking notes for this blog post before I finished the book. Here is what I thought:
The book was read and recorded in 2011 by the author in his own voice. It is as if we are sitting around a room listening to an old man tell a story from long ago. He tells the story of his experiences nearly 40 years earlier, written down in journals from the time but not completed for another five years after the journey. It is a story which has been told several times by the author and now he is retelling the story once more. Matthiessen is indeed old at the time of this recording and I can hear the effort taken to read through the entire book. At first it was a bit of a distraction, but I got used to it and felt like I was hearing the old man tell his story from long ago which gave this audio version a unique flavor, and even a little charm to it.
There is little dialogue and nearly all of it is through the author's perspective. Matthiessen weaves in historical information about the people, places, customs, and religions of the places he passes on the journey, so that the audience can have a fuller understanding of the places he is in. There is character development which grows further into the book we go as the group he is with gets smaller and smaller, the more remote they travel. Matthiessen too, is a character in this book. He has his own character development as he describes past, present, and, because he has written from a vantage point of years following the trek, a future versions of himself.
What is constant through the book is a very detailed description of the landscape. Nature is all powerful, ever present, and those in the book are subject to its whims. The landscape is ever changing and described in great detail. There is no mistake, the trek is arduous for weeks on end. All must endure the exhausting travel on foot, at ever increasing altitude in cold, rain, mud, rocky terrain, snow, ice, and treacherous crossings. While describing the harrowing detail of the trek, Matthiessen reflects on past events in his own life which he felt were just as taxing, drawing parallels between the physical and emotional.
Several articles I've read regarding this book recall different experiences of his journey and how he lives these events through Zen. Many articles highlight his arrival at the small town in Tibet which was their final destination where they would stay to observe the blue sheep. One of the main reasons Matthiessen embarks on this trek in the first place is to reach the holy Buddhist temple in this town. When he arrives, he finds it locked up and the residents gone for the winter. His attitude and the way he responds, not with disappointment, but with acceptance, demonstrates one of the spiritual principles often referred to throughout this book.
For myself, I found something else just as memorable, yet often ignored. Because we were both sailors, a specific vignette was memorable for me. Perhaps it was lost on most people who haven't had the experience, but early on in the book, Matthiessen specifically recalls 16 hours of his life in 1945, breaking from his current narrative as he writes. This was no accident. This specific time in his life meant something, and as he says, his life was never the same afterwards.
While stationed aboard a U.S. Navy ship standing bow watch as a lookout in 1945 during World War II, the seas were extraordinarily rough during a storm, as Matthiessen describes in detail. After a grueling eight hours on bow watch as the forward most person on the ship on the lookout for enemy ships, hazards to navigation, or other dangers, in the wet and col, his relief was too sea sick to take over his watch. Matthiessen was forced to endure another bow watch in these conditions. Over the next eight hours, his life changed.
The experience turned from agony to awakening. Instead of enduring and waiting, he was forced into the present moment and no longer awaited relief. He described becoming one with the ocean. Feeling the movement of the rain, wind, ship and swells of the sea. It was no longer eight hours of time, it was simply the present moment.
After this experience, Matthiessen says his life began to change. Subtle things spoke to him. Life made more sense, it was more colorful. Random phrases in books or mundane, everyday experiences spoke deeply to him. He could not explain why. I believe he was saying that this moment in life was his awakening and everyday since he has lived a richer experience. This is why he was not shaken by his experiences or perceived disappointments of his journey to Tibet. The goal was not somewhere else, it was being alive where he was at in the present moment.
