The Snow Leopard
by Peter Matthiessen
Nepal. A zoologist. A snow leopard. A grief that needs walking out.
For you if
you want to understand grief and impermanence through one of the most beautiful pieces of nature writing ever published
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In 1973 Matthiessen traveled to the Dolpo region of Nepal with the zoologist George Schaller, ostensibly to study Himalayan blue sheep but really to try to see a snow leopard and to process the recent death of his wife. He was a Zen Buddhist practitioner and the journey becomes simultaneously a wildlife expedition, a grief journey, and a meditation on impermanence. The most beautiful nature writing dispatch on this shelf. Matthiessen doesn't find the snow leopard — or rather, he finds it without seeing it — and the book understands that as the point.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Nepal • South Asia
- Voice
- An outside perspective on Nepal
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