Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
we were greeted by a hailstorm. Happily, the storm passed quickly, and the trekking com-
pany's guides had hot tea and a bonfire waiting at a camp just below the pass.
The next day's walk to Kokotkha offered another day in the old-growth hemlock forest
and yet another dimension to our trip. What had started as a hike became a virtual walking
meditation on rarity in nature, but not as one might typically describe a quest for rarity, look-
ing vainly for the last of the last. Instead we were immersed in rarity made common—and
enjoyed the uniqueness of being in a place where the species one was observing were rare
everywhere else in the Himalayas, because of hunting and habitat loss, but numerous and of-
ten rather tame here.
Spotted nutcrackers and spotted laughing thrushes seemed to track our progress through
the forest. Above us flew long-tailed minivets, the high-elevation version of the scarlet
minivet. We were resting in a forest clearing as the minivets sallied for insects when several
large horseflies descended on me. Mincha moved swiftly to dispatch one that had designs on
my exposed leg. A startled silence followed. We were unsure of what to make of the swift
and sudden execution by a devout Buddhist. “It is only stunned, not dead,” he assured us (or
perhaps, in denial, assured himself). “Mincha, how
should
a devout Buddhist deal with ec-
toparasites like horseflies and leeches?” I asked. We were walking through areas that were
undoubtedly thick with leeches in the wet season. The resident Buddhist teacher avoided my
question.
Over a fabulous dinner of soup, chicken curry, vegetables, and canned fruit and cream,
followed by whiskey, we talked about the rare mammals that might be just beyond the tent
fly. We had yet to see a musk deer bounding through the oak-rhododendron forests that lay
ahead, or a red panda moseying through the bamboo brakes. A Nepalese biologist, Bijaya
Kattel, who had studied musk deer in the Everest region of Nepal, discovered the oddest
behavior for this deer: they often climbed into the low, spreading branches of trees to feed
on lichens. Musk deer in the Himalayas were like tree kangaroos in New Guinea, a species
hardly designed for the arboreal niche yet nimble enough to exploit a valuable source of food
above ground level. Musk deer males are famous for the scent produced by a gland below
their belly. Even the droppings of this primitive deer carry a fragrance.
Tara Brach offers a parable about this species, with some poetic license on wildlife bio-
logy:
A legend from ancient India tells of a musk deer who, one fresh spring day, detected a mysterious
and heavenly fragrance in the air. It hinted of peace, beauty and love, and like a whisper beckoned
him onward. Compelled to find its source, he set out, determined to search the whole world over.
He climbed forbidding and icy mountain peaks, padded through steamy jungles, trekked across
endless desert sands. Wherever he went, the scent was there, faint yet always detectable. At the
end of his life, exhausted from his relentless search, the deer collapsed. As he fell his horn pierced
