The Snow Leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

Just ahead, where a stream brings light into the forest, the sherpas point. In the water shimmer, treading the iced-green moss on a fallen fir, an unfrightened furred creature, the size of a wolverine, crosses the sun shafts. The sherpas are gleeful, eager as two boys; I am grinning, too. The red panda—this one is lustrous red-and-black—must be the loveliest of all forest animals in the Himalaya; with the wild tracts of the Suli Gorge behind us, I had given up all hope of seeing it. And it makes me happy that the sherpas take such pleasure in it; the panda has brought the first smile to Dawa’s face since the dancing party at Saldang.