The story, based on ancient village tales, concerns a shape-shifting guardian (the locals call them mergichans) in the body of the wide-eyed snow leopard. As a protector she guards an infinity of mountain realms and the people in them but it is time to find some-one to take her place. In this tale the snow leopard protector seeks out a young girl to train in the wisdom of guardianship. Not only is the story intriguing for kids but it also has a lovely environmental message about the future of the mountains. Kind of comical, too, right? That some mate, any mate, might find that noise inviting? But we found it pretty transformative, as we did find the whales, and we saw, too, many many other species of animals and birds we dutifully recorded along the way. Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterrupted experience in which body, mind, and nature and the same.” (42) This was a donation to my Little Free Library Shed. It was also a winner of the 1979 National Book Award. I was attracted to the book cover, and the idea of it, that made me want to explore reading it.

Matthiessen had recently lost his partner, Deborah Love, to cancer, and left their children behind – at residential schools or with family friends – to go on this spirit-healing quest. Though he occasionally feels guilty, especially about the eight-year-old, his thoughts are usually on the practicalities of the mountain trek. They have sherpas to carry their gear, and they stop in at monasteries but also meet ordinary people. More memorable than the human encounters, though, are those with the natural world. Matthiessen watches foxes hunting and griffons soaring overhead; he marvels at alpine birds and flora. There is a ghastly amateurishness to the expedition, money given to sherpas for them to buy boots is not spent on boots, they can't hire porters for the entire duration of the trip - I might hope that today someone might attempt the simpler solution of training someone who already lived in the area to observe the bharal rather than trying to organise a dozen and a half Nepalis plus the occasional animal to transport two non-Nepalis plus food, firewood and kit for all involved to a remote plateau. Matthiessen is so focused on being observant that he fails to notice on the return, GS remains to watch the bharal mating (or not) for longer, that one of the two sherpas going with him has dysentery. Brings current knowledge of the species, not only to researchers and conservationists, but also to decision makers, academics, and students It was late fall, with winter a whisper away. Would they make it before the snow season turned the world impassable? Would they see the snow leopard? The element of suspense at the heart of this story exerts a mighty pull. A non-white MC. I don't know where this takes place. Mongolia? It looks like Mongolia to me. http://moontrug.com/wp-content/upload...Chundawat, R. 1990. Habitat selection by a snow leopard in Hemis National Park, India. Int.Ped.Book of Snow leopards, 6: 85-92. Blomqvist, L., I. Sten. 1982. Reproductive biology of the snow leopard, Panthera uncia. Int. Ped. Book of Snow Leopards, 3: 71-79. But the point of this book is to neither romanticize nor demonize PM (or myself). I think we mostly do come to admire PM, at times, but that is decidedly not the point in his writing, overall. His goal is is to be honest, and clear. He is trying to empty his soul of all self-destructive desires and needs. But he has a son that needs him, you say, and you’d have a point. PM is not always an easy guy to get along with or like. He sometimes seems, regarding his hired sherpas, a tad ethnocentric, as even more so does his friend GS, if not downright racist on the rare occasion. But PM is not trying to whitewash his story. He is trying to be truthful about himself, and he is, about his marriage, for sure. I believe this is one reason some reviewers like the book less, that he is grumpy and cool and removed even by his own accounts, but this is one reason I admired his self reflection here. It feels honest; it feels real.

Chapter 23: The Role of Zoos in Snow Leopard Conservation: Captive Snow Leopards as Ambassadors of Wild Kin Snow leopards are extremely reclusive which has made it very difficult to accurately determine the average lifespan for the species in the wild. In captivity snow leopards have lived to 21 years of age. ( Wharton and Freeman, 1988)The language is in no way dumbed down for children, as you can see from my opening paragraph. This is good. There are a lot of biological facts and observations and insights about the conservation of Nepal. A lot of their exploration that year helped to establish the National Park that preserves the snow leopard territory. Alex had some misgivings about going on the recent trip at all, feeling a “bit miscast” because he had nothing directly to do with the original journey. But again the invitation came at a significant moment in his life. He had, he explains, been through a very rough couple of years since – but unrelated to – his father’s death. The stress had got in the way of his grieving, so the journey came as an opportunity to reconnect. Rieger, I. 1984. Tail functions in ounces, Uncia uncia. Intl. Ped. Book of Snow Leopards, 4: 85-97. I spoke to Alex Matthiessen, his father’s “sun”, on the phone last week. He is now 53 and works in New York as a consultant and campaigner on environmental issues; formerly he was CEO of Riverkeeper, which strives to maintain and improve the Hudson river and protect the drinking water of 9 million New Yorkers. He has written an introduction to this new volume of The Snow Leopard in which he examines both his own relationship with the book and with his father.

For two months of 1973, from late September to late November, Matthiessen joined zoologist George Schaller on a journey from the Nepalese Himalayas to the Tibetan Plateau to study Himalayan blue sheep. Both also harbored a hope of spotting the elusive snow leopard. Ruedi, P., A. Helstab, H. Wiesner, P. Keller. 1978. Liver Cirrhosis in the Snow Leopard ( Uncia uncia). International Pedigree Book of Snow Leopards, 1: 113-129. Forrest, J., E. Wikramanayake, R. Shrestha, G. Areendran, K. Gyeltshen, A. Maheshwari, S. Mazumdar, R. Naidoo, G. Thapa, K. Thapa. 2012. Conservation and climate change: assessing the vulnerability of snow leopard habitat to treeline shift in the Himalaya. Biological Conservation, 150(1): 129-135. Today snow leopards are protected throughout much of their range and international trade is banned. Freeman, H. 1982. Characteristics of the social behavior in the snow leopard. Int. Ped. Book of Snow Leopards, 3: 117-120.The snow leopard’s powerful build allows it to scale great steep slopes with ease. Its hind legs give the snow leopard the ability to leap six times the length of its body. A long tail enables agility, provides balance and wraps around the resting snow leopard as protection from the cold. Rationale for adopting community-based biodiversity protection and management models in snow leopard range countries