T 日 E S N OW L E 0 PA R D 273 Dawa stands there oxlike, and I must call out tO him time and again t0 come and help us. Seemingly, he is not present, he is stumbling and apathetic. At one point, sliding his load across wet ice, he places its cover uppermost, thereby soaking my ex- posed sleeping bag below. Of late, this instinct for the inept 1 れ ove has been unerrmg, and no amount Of remonstrance does any good ・ On the far side of the Raka gorge, cold sun shafts burst from easterly ravines: one ravine, SO Tukten says, leads dO 、 tO Tarap. The northern slopes are green with thorny growth, but there are no cliffs here, and no sign of blue sheep. The river must dance with fine white-water torrents in the spring, for the canyon ascends steeply t0 an open valley, where a broad black gravel bed, windswept, without life, comes down out 0f the snows. Here we turn south, toward the Himalaya. ln this stretch, the going is easy, and Tende, taking Karma's load, removes her b00ts and goes on barefoot, leaving Chiring Lamo tO her husband. Where the river turns, Karma stops tO build a fire. Having no faith in his assertion that this Namdo Pass, though "very steep," is only an hour's climb above the riverbed, I take off my boots and wade a tributary stream and keep on going, hoping that my stern example will hurry this laggard in his midday meal. Across the stream is a large stupa, and near the stupa is a cairn 0f ragged prayer flags and crude 4 stones. Mixed with the stones in a jumbled heap are huge-horned skulls of the ar- gali, one of which looks relatively fresh. The argali, long-legged and swift, does not depend on nearby cliff ledges for safety, and for the rest of the day I scan the thorny mountainsides for 0 レな 4 アれ″ 10 れ . Ahead, two herders turn twelve yaks 100Se among the thorns. They will not try the pass today, for one is collecting brush for firewood while the other guards his bales beside a cave. Not far beyond, the yak route turns off from the riverbed, starting a steep ascent IntO the snows. Already it is afternoon, and I have been walking steadily for seven hours, and it feels t00 late in a long day to start a hard climb to the Raka pass. On the other hand, if we make camp this early every day, it will

T H E S N 0 ′ LE 0 p A R D 39 privet and rose. The child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center Of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unlson with the primordial na- ture of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through. Ecstasy is identity 、 vith all existence, and ecstasy showed in his bright paintings; like the Aurignacian hunter, who became the deer he drew on the cave wall, there was no "self" to separate him from the bird or flower.. The same spontaneous identity with the object is achieved in the bold sumi painting of Japan— a strong expresslon Of Zen culture, SInce tO become one with whatever one does is a true realization 0f the Way.. Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and un- interpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement Of our VISion, the retreat from won- der, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life intO safe crannies, the desperate instrnct that our life passes un- lived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which Ⅵ℃ came. Compare the wild, free paintings of the child with the stiff, pinched 'pictures" these become as the painter notices the paint- ing and tries tO portray "reality" as Others see it; self-consclous now, he steps out of his own painting and, finding himself apart from things, notlces the silence all around and becomes alarmed by the vast significations of Creation. The armor of the "I" be- gins tO form, the construction and desperate assertlon of sepa- rate identity, the loneliness: "Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern. ” 8 Alex is eight, and already he has shut away the wildness of the world. I lost it, t00 , in early childhood. But memories would come on wings oflight—a shining bird, high pines and sun, the fire in a floating leaf, the autumn heat in weathered wood, wood smell, a child, soft lichen on a stone—a light-filled imma- nence, shimmering and breathing, and yet so fleeting that it left me breathless and in pain. One night in 1945 , on a Navy vessel in a Pacific storm, my relief on bow watch, seasick, failed to ap- pear, and I was alone for eight hours ln a maelstrom of wind