The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen & Pico Iyer

Author:Peter Matthiessen & Pico Iyer [Matthiessen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101663189
Publisher: Penguin Group US

OCTOBER 28

A light snow fell throughout the evening, but this morning it is clear. The Ring-mos demanded a raise in pay before they would try again, and not receiving it, have quit. I agree with GS that they are robbers, but since the total increased expense, on the Asian wage scale, comes to about twenty-five dollars, our decision seems to me a false economy. However, he feels—and very likely he is right—that the Ring-mos are sure to quit short of the pass in any case, leaving us that much poorer and no wiser.

GS left Cave Camp in the early hours, in the hope that the snow crust will support men’s weight before it is softened by the sun; he has with him two Ring-mos who agreed to guide but not to carry, and he is also taking Jang-bu, our best interpreter, and Phu-Tsering, our most experienced mountaineer. Traveling light, they will try to reach Shey, where, hopefully, new porters can be recruited. Meanwhile, Dawa will carry a load of firewood up to the snowfields depot, in case GS’s party cannot cross Kang La and gets caught by snow or darkness on its return. I shall remain to guard the camp against light-fingered porters, one of whom has already made off with my trusty stave.

Now it is noon, and Dawa has trudged away up the dark canyon. I will enjoy a day here by myself, although Cave Camp is the most inhospitable of any of the camps made since Pokhara. This deep bend in the ravine is stony and narrow and very cold; except for a half hour in the first part of the morning, when the sun crossed like an omen between peaks, the camp has remained in profound shadow. At these altitudes, in the Himalayan autumn, the difference between sun and shade is striking: the stream by my tent is clogged by ice, whereas lizards lie sunning on the rock slope above camp where I climb up to get warm and write these notes.

In early afternoon the sun touches my tent and is quickly gone; a cold wind off Kanjiroba scours the canyon. It is too chilly to sit still in one place, and I go down the ravine a little distance to a point where the high glacier and great icefalls can be seen. The wind blows snow from pristine points that glisten in the light, and there are magic colors in the clouds that sail across the peaks on high blue journeys.

Once again, I am struck by the yin-yang of these rivers—the one slope white, right down to the water, and the other dark, yet with a snow patch on the dark side and a dark rock on the white, each side containing the seed of its own opposite. The balance of cosmic principles, positive (yang) and negative (yin), as taught in the ancient “Book of Changes” (the I Ching), seems to foretell the electron theory of energy as matter, and is also a wonderful emblem of

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