Early in the 1980's I read The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. It's a book that defies description and category. It's a travel book about a journey into Himalayan Nepal in search of the snow leopard. Then again the book reads like a novel with a gripping plot, kept taut by the tension of whether or not he will eventually see the near mythical snow leopard, and with memorable characters. It is undoubtedly autobiographic, and Matthiessen is a wise and self-aware observer of his own inner climate, his hopes and failures, and his way of looking at the world. Throughout the book Matthiessen comments on Zen Buddhism, by then a philosophy that held a deep appeal to someone in quest not only of experience, but of the meaning of Being itself.
At the time I first read The Snow Leopard, there were relatively few films or photographs of the animal available. The snow leopard is elusive, shy, lives in remote and inaccessible locations high in the mountains, and in order to see them in the 1970's the traveller had to endure terrain, weather and deprivations only the most hardened and resourceful could achieve. There are near things with avalanches and crevasses, changes in sherpa personnel, conflict and co-operation amongst the team, fascinating descriptions of the food in the remote villages and the customs of people strange and hard to interpret to western eyes.
On that first reading I came to the end of the book with a profound sense of gratitude that in our world, rapidly being absorbed by human consumption, development of domination, there was still space for such a magnificent, graceful and mysterious animal. That has all changed. The snow leopard faces the very real threat of extinction in the wild. Even in the 1970's Matthiessen had anticipated the increasing dangers of decreasing habitat, the invasion of sightseers and tourists, the massive profits for poachers and the insatiable greed and arrogance of those who glory in trophies and accessories made at the cost of not just one snow leopard; those who kill a male snow leaopard weaken the entire population, and if they kill a female they destroy the possibility of future families in an environment where natural survival is already precarious.
So it was with excitement and a thin sliver of anxiety that I found myself at the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park. The car tour was slow, interesting and simply acted as a warm up act for me. Then we climbed the modest brae to the snow leopard enclosure, and the anxiety that the animals may not co-operate with yet more gawping tourists and decide to hide in the long grass.
There are moments in all our lives when we know we are seeing something that changes our way of viewing the world, that shifts around and rearranges the inner furniture of past experiences real and imagined. My first view was more a sigh of recognition, the fulfilment of a longing to see, just to see, and be grateful for the existence of these animals. I have a modest and ageing camera, and hadn't come to photograph and capture, but to wonder, and enjoy. No photographic image can substitute for those moments of grace and power when Animesh moved out of the grass and across her cliff top, and I exhaled something between a sigh, a smile and a prayer of gratitude.
All those years ago I had read about Matthiessen's quest, and had been drawn into the story of these magnificent cats. In the intervening time David Attenborough made a full documentary aided by the advent of digital technology and the full resources of the BBC. But this was different. Here was a snow leopard, kept safe in Scotland, the wire fences an ambiguous barrier that contains an animal made to roam for endless miles, but which protects her, allows her to breed, and so ensure some kind of future for her species. And here I was, with a ten year old camera, privileged to see her, and to take in the marvel of wildness and a creature often called the ghost of the mountains.
As a theologian I read a lot of theology. But theology has to find a firm footing in the realities of our world, its politics, economics, ethics and our human impact on God's creation. Theology has to be brought into conversation with what is happening to our environment and climate, and as counter-voice to our insatiable lust for economic power and dominance. Theology is not concerned about concepts and metaphysics, ideas and arguments as ends in themselves. Theology is a means to an end, a way of understanding God, the world and ourselves in ways that enable us to see what we are doing, and learn what we need to do, to be stewards of God's creation, harbingers of God's kingdom, responsible and responsive human beings whose privileged place in the world is a gift not a right, and is for the good purposes of God not the proud self-assertion of human dominance.
Matthiessen's book, The Snow Leopard, is a masterpiece of literature. For all the reasons previously mentioned, and for one more. For over 40 years I have carried inside me the image of the snow leopard, imagined from the pages of this book. It takes remarkable writing to create the longing and fascination this book embedded in my imagination. No photos or film clips since, have erased my long held desire to see this creature, and to gaze with inner wonder at such a gift to our world. No wonder this animal became a symbol of the World Wildlife Fund. One of the most treasured birthday gifts our daughter Aileen gave me, was a year's sponsorship of a snow leopard. Our visit to the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park was part of that same nexus of love, memory and gift.
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