The Art of Patience
Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A journey in search of one of the most elusive creatures on the planet
Adventurer Sylvain Tesson has led a restless life, riding across Central Asia on horseback, freeclimbing the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, and traversing the Himalayas by foot. But while recovering from an accident that left him in a coma, and nursing his wounds from a lost love, he found himself domesticated, his lust for life draining with each moment spent staring at a screen. An expedition to the mountains of Tibet, in search of the famously elusive snow leopard, presented itself as a cure.
For the chance to glimpse this near mythical beast, Tesson and his companions must wait for hours without making a sound or a movement, enduring the thin air and brutal cold. Their vigil becomes an act of faith--many have pursued the snow leopard for years without seeing it--and as they keep their watch, Tesson comes to embrace the virtues of patience and silence. His faith is rewarded when the snow leopard, the spirit of the mountain, reveals itself: an embodiment of what we have surrendered in our contemporary lives. And the simple act of waiting proves to be an antidote to the frenzy of our times.
A celebration of the power and grace of the wild, and a requiem for the world's vanishing places, The Art of Patience is a revelatory account of the communion between nature and the human heart. Sylvain Tesson has written a new masterpiece on the relationship between man and beast in prose as sublime as the wilderness that inspired it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Travel writer Tesson (The Consolations of the Forest) follows the elusive snow leopard through cliffs and mountains in this lyrical survey. As Tesson and his fellow travelers quietly wait to catch a glimpse of the creature in the mountains of Tibet, Tesson muses on nature, wildlife, movement, and eventually humankind (on his travel companions: "I was beginning to understand that in the contemplation of animals one is confronted with an inverted image of oneself"). The narrative builds slowly—it is, after all, mostly about waiting—though the lyricism helps pass the time while waiting for the leopard to show up. Occasionally, the author's aphorisms strike as melodramatic, as when he asserts while watching a wolf hunt antelopes, "Life seemed to me to be an unending series of attacks, and the landscape, apparently unchanging, a backdrop to murders perpetrated at every level of biology." And when the leopard finally appears, it's a "religious apparition." Nevertheless, the promise of seeing the rare creature in the wild may be a strong enough hook for some. Patient nature-minded readers should check this out.
