Journeys of Transformation

In 1973 Peter Matthiessen accompanied biologist George Schaller to Nepal in a study of Himalayan blue sheep and to search for the rare snow leopard. Matthiessen hoped, as well, to meet a revered Tibetan lama at an ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. Having recently lost his wife to cancer, and facing dangerous winter snowfalls and hazardous mountain terrain, he struggled with grief, regret, and fear while he attempted to better understand and practice Zen and Tibetan Buddhist teachings he had studied for several years. Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978) describes this personal pilgrimage as a search for self-transformation and enlightenment. As he traced his journey toward these geographical and spiritual goals, he portrayed habits that made it difficult to change and intense experiences that disclosed the possibility of a radically different way of being--