Rating
The Pequod Review:
Peter Matthiessen’s fourteenth book, The Snow Leopard, is a non-fiction account of his two month journey through the Himalayas in search of the rare snow leopard. The book is decent as a travel/adventure story, but Matthiessen gets a little too hazy and mystical in his praise of mindfulness and Zen philosophy.
The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.
Some readers may find this a feature, not a bug.