Peter Matthiessen turns 82 today. One of the founders of The Paris Review, Matthiessen has written eloquently of the Everglades and the Himalayas, two seemingly opposite regions. Colin Thubron once wrote that one of the things that makes great travel writing such a rare event is the fact that the physical strength required for rugged travel is seldom combined in one person with the sensitivity necessary for observation and reflection. That the soul of the adventurer is rarely joined with that of the artist. Matthiessen has proved to be the unusual exception, as this passage from The Snow Leopard demonstrates:
"We walk on in mud and gloom and cold. At the mountain village called Sibang, to the beat of tom-toms, a buffalo is slowly killed for Durga Puja and its fresh blood drunk, while children stand in a circle in the rain. These mountain children have the big bellies of malnutrition, and though they seem no less content than the children of the valleys, they are quiet and do not sing out to us; one of the blood drinkers has the loveliest face of any child that I have ever seen."
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