From Naudanda

"From Naudanda, the Yamdi Khola is no more than a white ribbon rushing down between dark walls of conifers into its gorge. Far away eastward, far below, the Marsa River opens out into Lake Phewa, near Pokhara, which glints in the sunset of the foothills." – Matthiessen, from The Snow Leopard










For it is life we want. We want the world, the whole beautiful world, alive – and we alive in it." – Bill Holm


Observations Made About Mathessen's Snow Leopard After Walking Around the Ice Out back


This isn't the Himalayas, no not quite.
It's been said by a few that when driving along the interstate into the coulee region
which is right in the heart of the Mississippi watershed
that they can understand why the old beer company used to call this god's country;
look at those rolling bluffs seemingly bubbling up from nowhere
after the stark plateau of eastern Minnesota farming plateau;
look how that little dipping cup of blue water forms down there at the end of the road,
that is the great river, one of the worlds' big ones, and it curls
and is stopped, curls and is stopped, how many times on its way down to the delta Norlins.
Here we are right inside all that.
Right here we walk down onto a platform of ice by mid February,
shoveled here smooth as it could and two hockey nets placed for fun;
its a mirror over water and here, once in a while in morning, three eagles
swing out of nowhere and gather down at a slivery open edge to gobble up the freebies
of frozen fish; they look as big as children, alone in the landscape
nothing up against them to provide appropriate shape and height.
Now, how is one going to complain of eagles and ice and major rivers?
I wonder if the sherpas in The Snow Leopard might read of Mark Twain as a cub pilot
floating down the river right here in the coulee region
and longingly consider sea level and no real reason to carry heavy packs?
I imagine something like a snow leopard out there on the ice.
I conjure up a monastery that might extend out from a rock formation,
real live Buddhists inside, chanting away, making sense only to themselves,
learning again and again how track down that loud mouth inner voice
and soothe it purposeful breaths; well, then, that would be something wouldn't it?
I kick at the top layer of an oggered fishing hole wondering if there is wild mystery within?
Walleyes bounding about at the bottom, cool backs, hungry, scrounging along the mud
all day and all night for something; their minds are quiet, enlightened.
So far, then, we have enlightened tourists and bottom feeding fish. The ice is mindless.
The sky doesn't think that much of me, either, and I appreciate it.
No, it is only the sky inside this word mill that projects my legs over the cauldrons
of the Himalayas, has me camping along a wild-named mountain creek,
and thinks it sees a ghost gray cat smelling at the scrabble
at the other side of the ancient ridgeline above.
I listen close and do hear a purr seize up from somewhere around my socks
and rise up through my lungs to sing to myself.