Himalaya

  

 P A R O      T A K T S A N G      M O N A S T E R Y

 The Tigress's Lair in English.

This monastery is perched on the face of a

sheer cliff, overlooking the Paro Valley nearly a

thousand feet below.  Buddhist monks started

this audacious architectural project in 1692.

As you might expect, making a spiritual pilgrimage 

to this sacred site is a bit of a walk.  The total distance

is a short but rugged four miles.  Your botanical tour

includes climbing 700 steep stone steps cut into 

the walls of a sheer canyon gorge.  You use a 

forever wet bridge to cross the face of a 100 meter

waterfall along the way.  You arrive at a pleasant cafe

at the halfway mark.  Here's your chance to turn around

and go back.

Instead of proceeding to the monastery

you settle for buying a t-shirt that says:

I Bailed on My Spiritual Journey.

 G L A C I A L      P A T H      N E A R      E V E R E S T

 Our planet is molten.  The landscape we inhabit is one of a

number of continental sized tectonic plates that make up

the Earth's crust.  Over the hundreds of millions of years

these land masses move about and sometimes collide.

Roughly fifty million years ago the plate of India crashed

into the Asian plate at speeds of up to 15 centimeters

yearly.  That's around a 6 inch movement by the continent

over the space of a year.  You wouldn't notice were you

to be standing there.  

The collision continues to this day at about 2 inches a year.

The result is slow-motion violence over geological time.

Any galactic body shop mechanic would take one look

at the Himalayan Mountains and say you've got a badly

crumpled fender.  India had its flat plains elevated tens

of thousands of feet over the past 50 million years.

The rise of these mountains interfered with the globe's

jet-stream, shifting it south in order to go around this

obstruction.  This enabled the expansion of cool, polar

air and changes in weather patterns.  Some meteorologists

claim this shift was a major contribution to the formation

of the Ice Age.

 B  H  A  R  A  L

 Agility is more important than speed for survival.

These mountain goats feed in Alpine meadows

where steep, rocky terrain is nearby as defense

against sudden ambushes from the snow leopard,

its most lethal enemy.  

The Bharal has rubbery, split-hooves that act like

suction cups on near vertical surfaces, giving it

near flawless traction.  The male's horns are

impressive but not showy.  Larger horns 

increases the animal's instability while 

navigating a precarious situation.

  H I M A L A Y A N      T A H R 

 They segregate on the basis of sex into herds of

either all-male or all-female, year round,

except when its mating season.  In the autumn

the mature bucks pay a visit to the female camp.

They have a good time, then leave.

Little do they know that all this rutting frolic

has been their contribution to a worthy cause.

There will be no male presence to help guard

from hungry predators the batch of newborns

that come with the Spring.  At half the size of

the adult male Tahr these mothers could use 

some help.  But the biggest male Tahr,

even with all its 220 pounds of resolve, 

remains little more than a hero sandwich

for the vicious prowling predator nearby.

Only when the Tahr herd reaches the sanctuary 

of nearby sheer stone cliffs, are they safely 

out of reach of the ever patrolling Snow Leopard.

 H I M A L A Y A N      M O N A L

 His Gaudy Highness.

This is the standard from which a female monal

decides who is most desirable.  Today's

female pheasant wraps her man in something

off-the-rack Broadway.  Something psychedelic.

He becomes everyone's dashing Rocket Man...

Elton John, in topknot and orange tails.

The female sits on her nest, camouflaged in

muted colors.  Not far away is her husband,

a shimmering knight in the sunlight,

standing guard.

 S N O W Y      L E O P A R D

 They've been known to cover twenty-five miles in

a single night to track the scent of their mate.

It's sex.  Nothing more.  The big cats are loners

and go their separate ways.  

Providing for genetic diversity is the primary biological

role of the male species, while the female creates new

individuals to renew the species.  On and on it goes

a couple hundred million generations and more.  

Cats.

Everywhere across the globe some version of this 

animal's basic engineering sits atop the region's 

food chain as the apex predator.  Each species

of cat, modified through eons of trial and error,

remains the most successful carnivore approach

to its environment, wherever it appears.

Genetic diversity gives this organism the mechanism

to adapt, as a species, to the changes that occur 

to its environment over time.

*   *   *   *   * 

©  Tom Taylor

 OVER   EASY

 

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