'In 1973, Matthiessen journeyed with George Schaller, a field biologist, to Crystal Mountain in the Himalayas, to study the wild blue sheep of the region called bharal They also hoped to see the rare snow leopard, an almost mythical creature which Schaller once glimpsed on a previous visit Matthiessen is a student of Zen Buddhism and for him this was as much an inner journey as a field trip He blends the spiritual with the earthly and his book is an account of a remote and timeless place and its people