Word: snow
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SNOW LEOPARD by Peter Matthiessen; Viking; 400 pages...
Till now Peter Matthiessen's readers have known him primarily as a novelist, a naturalist and a travel writer. The Snow Leopard reveals a more private Matthiessen, a 51-year-old widower searching for peace of mind and, of course, material for a book...
...explored and written about the Amazon, North America and Africa. The Caribbean was the stage for his 1975 poetic narrative of turtle fishermen, Far Tortuga. His latest work, The Snow Leopard, springs from a 250-mile hike that he and Field Biologist George Schaller made five years ago in the Himalayas. Schaller (The Mountain Gorilla, The Serengeti Lion) pushed tirelessly through icy passes and over the Tibetan plateau to observe the rutting habits of the bharal, a wild goatlike animal better known as the blue sheep. He also hoped for a glimpse of the snow leopard, a creature so rare...
...Matthiessen make the trip? "To say I was interested in blue sheep or snow leopards, or even in remote lamaseries, was no answer," he writes. "To say I was making a pilgrimage seemed fatuous and vague, though in some sense, that was true as well . . . I only knew that I was drawn toward the snow mountains, in search of a secret that, like the yeti, might well be missed for the very fact of searching...
Although state officials shut down the ski lift on 14,162-ft. Mount Shasta last April, intrepid skiers and snow bunnies are still skimming down high-altitude snow fields that are up to 25 feet deep. State officials welcome the snow pack for another reason. Explains Bill Clark, spokesman for the department of water resources: "It's like having water in the bank." Backpackers complain the snow is hindering their hiking into parts of the Sierras they were barred from visiting last year because of the high fire danger...