Don Hunter - Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World

STORIES FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

EDITED BY DON HUNTER

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO

Boulder

2012 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado
5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C
Boulder, Colorado 80303

All rights reserved
Printed in Canada

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University Press, and Western State College of Colorado.

This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Snow leopard : stories from the roof of the world / Don Hunter, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60732-193-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-60732-205-4 (ebook)
1. Snow leopard Anecdotes. I. Hunter, Don O., 1951
QL737.C23S582 2012
599.75x55 dc23
2012019778

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

by Helen Freeman. 2005 by Helen Freeman. Printed by permission of Stan Freeman.

by Mitchell Kelly. 2010 by Mitchell Kelly. Printed by permission of the author.

by Peter Matthiessen. 1978 by Peter Matthiessen. Printed by permission of the author.

by George B. Schaller. 1972 New York Zoological Society. Printed by permission of the author and courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society.

Dust jacket design by Daniel Pratt and Logan Hunter

To Helen Freeman and Rinchen Wangchuk.

Their voice for the snow leopard inspired many and continues to echo in the great mountains of central Asia.

The most charismatic of the great cats may have seen me in the wild, but I have not seen it, nor do I ever expect to. All my snow leopard paintings have been based on animals I observed in zoos. Though I have never seen a snow leopard in the wild, I have ventured into its mountainous world. My wife, Birgit, and I accompanied Helen Freeman, founder of the Snow Leopard Trust, to the edge of snow leopard country in the Himalayan region of India, Sikkim, and Nepal. Over the years, we have gotten to know Rodney Jackson and become close friends with Peter Matthiessen, two of the contributing authors to this moving collection of essays. Their stories, along with the others in this book, exemplify the personal connection between a rare cat and the scientist-explorer drawn to study and protect it.

Hermann Hesse wrote in his novel Narcissus and Goldmund that true art must have a sense of mystery. It is likely that my artistic fascination with the snow leopard comes with its innate sense of mystery. Also, I have a love of muted colors. The subtle variety of grays in this cats fur has far more appeal to me than the vibrancy of a scarlet macaw. Darkness is associated with mystery, but so are mist and whiteness. In the painting Out of the White I was feeling a hope that snow leopards are emerging into a brighter and clearer future.

Just recently, we once again traveled the high roads of snow leopard country, enjoying the beauty of Ladakhs iconic monasteries and watching blue sheep graze on steep mountainsides. We saw no snow leopards but sensed their presence, feeling lucky and thrilled to be under the distant gaze of this magnificent cat. May you experience a similar feeling as you read about the snow leopard in this remarkable collection.

ROBERT BATEMAN

The idea for Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World came from reading Marc Bekoff and Clara Blessley Lowes Listening to Cougar, an anthology of personal communion with the big cat of the western United States. The inspiration for this book came from my internal voice calling me to tithe in return for a spirit enriched by sharing time and space with the cougars cousin in central Asia. Unlike the cougar, very little has been written about this beautiful and mystical cat, especially at an emotional, personal level. The worlds coolest cat is in deep trouble, its world under siege. To survive it needs empathy, it must roar, awakening an unknowing world. But this big cat has no roarthe only big cat that doesnt. This unique anthology speaks out on behalf of the cat with no roar. It attempts to give a voice to the snow leopard, a voice that transcends species, a voice echoed by those who know it best: the rare few who have given a portion of their lives to help preserve this beautiful cat.

Ive carefully selected contributors who truly know the snow leopard, having paid the price of priceless time in the worlds mightiest mountains. Most of them are friends and colleagues Ive traveled with, worked with. These good and hardy people share a common passion for protecting the snow leopard and its fragile world. Ive shared their experiences, heard their stories; I know they will inform, inspire, and imbue readers through heartfelt stories of adventure, danger, and discovery. Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World brings these journeys to life, shared in every detail by a breed of scientist-peregrine as rare and tough as the cat they study.

There is an art to quests of science and spirit. Raw experience without perspective and inner reflection is empty of meaning and does little to shape the core of who we are. In this sense, the nature and depth of adventure are attenuated through prisms of individual self: whats adventure to one person may bore another, and vice versa. Central Asia possesses a timeless magnetism for the adventuresome sprit. Long before I set foot in the great mountain ranges the snow leopard knows as home, a league of extraordinary people marched the river trails and crossed the high passes, lifting the veil of the unknown. These early travelers shared a common pathology of spirit, shamelessly addicted to high remote places, seeking kinship among strange faces, and finding solace in endless horizons. They veiled their passion beneath quests of religion, trade, health, conquest, science.

Earlier scientists and adventurers wrote eloquently of their exploits. These seminal artists of words spawned an entirely new genre of evocative prose, engrossing the armchair traveler with voyeur glimpses of exotic lands heretofore known only as terra incognita. Marco Polo, Ibn Batutta, Hsuan Tsang, and Sven Hedin are but a few who found snow leopard country alluring, a place of greatness:

Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street.

WILLIAM BLAKE, GNOMIC VERSES

Blake would have us believe such discovery of place and spirit happened only among men, but, in fact, many astonishing women were also drawn to the adventurous life, rebuking the easy path of jostling in the street. Overcoming repressive restraints of sex and Victorian decorum, which men did not have to deal with, these amazing ladies possessed a deep well of grit equal to that of any man, racking up feats of discovery hardly believable if their exploits were not so well documented. Further, they did so throughout their lives: Fanny Bullock Workman was a recordsetting mountaineer at fifty-three, Alexandra David-Neel at fifty-six walked 2,000 miles across the Tibetan Plateau to reach Lhasa, and Isabella Bird in her seventieth year capped an illustrious life of adventure with a 1,000-mile horseback trip through Morocco. Bird climbed Longs Peak in Colorado and traveled around central Asia well over a century before me. Im very proud that three equally intrepid women have stories in this book, continuing a legacy that proclaims the world of the snow leopard forever genderless.