The Snow Leopard

The Snow Leopard was written by Peter Matthiessen and published in 1978. It won the National Book Award for Contemporary Thought in 1979 and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of nature writing and spiritual memoir.

The book chronicles Matthiessen's trek to Crystal Mountain in the remote Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal, on the Tibetan Plateau. The journey covered approximately 250 miles on foot through the Himalayas, reaching altitudes above 17,000 feet.

Matthiessen traveled with the wildlife biologist George Schaller, who was conducting field research on the Himalayan blue sheep (bharal) and hoped to observe the elusive snow leopard in the wild. The two men trekked together for roughly two months through one of the most isolated regions in the Himalayas.

Matthiessen, a practicing Zen Buddhist whose wife Deborah had recently died of cancer, undertook the trek partly as a pilgrimage and meditation on grief and impermanence. His Buddhist practice, shaped by his studies with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center, informs the book's contemplative passages alongside its descriptions of Tibetan Buddhist culture in Dolpo.