Like You'd Understand, Anyway

These are people whose methods of going about the day have remained unchanged since the Stone Age. And yet they were for a time in the ancient world the uncontested masters of Central Asia.

My theory is that the altitude, combined with the intensity of ultraviolet rays and the cold, hugely reduces the likelihood of bacterial reproduction. Otherwise these people would have long since died off, given their lack of commitment to even the most elementary hygiene.

…

Another long week of walking and riding. Beger cries out periodically when he turns his foot in his boot. The porters have tried a different poultice.

At twilight we come to the edge of a great salt lake, a startling robin's egg blue in the blinding sun. Dried salts of varying widths band the shoreline. Three of the porters explore with Gulam while the others start a fire and erect a communal tent. Some sort of animal sinew is employed for the guy ropes.

Beger is of the opinion that we have a much better chance of finding the yeti in the higher elevations, where most of the sightings have been recorded.

“The conventional wisdom,” I tell him.

He responds with an unpleasant smile before turning away. The lobes of his ears below his fur hat are a merry red from the sun. “Here, what's to prevent them from seeing us coming kilometers and kilometers away?” he asks.

“By all accounts they have no fear of people,” I remind him. “And of course they'd have as much warning in the mountains as they would here.”

He glumly drops the subject.

“Our only alternative is to choose whom to trust and then to trust them,” I tell him.

He snorts.

Gulam returns pleased. A short way down the shoreline are fresh footprints and the crushed bones of something.

“Maybe they're using this as a salt lick,” Beger says from inside the tent.

After dark a yak is set out as a lure. Staked to the ground fifty yards or so from the camp, it bleats and grunts its frustration at being separated from its fellows. I clean and ready our rifles. They're formidable, if a little balky when left untended, but their heft is reassuring. The yak bleats all night long. The next day we travel twenty or so kilometers around the shoreline and repeat the procedure.

The guns travel in specially sewn oilskin pouches for protection against the grit. Beger tries soaking his foot in the salt water while we watch the sun set. Up to this point, in terms of birds, I've noticed only a few small snow finches and the occasional sand grouse.

The sun's rays lance over mountain ridges that remain unimaginably distant. The salt around us turns orange in the light.

From that first childhood moment in which I could see over my windowsill, I dreamed of far horizons. At the age of seven I found a translation of Sir Charles Bell's Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan. The first two phrases I learned were “the elephant gun is on the yak” and “all monks are too lazy.” Few foreigners have explored Tibet as comprehensively as I have. I've traversed eleven thousand kilometers on quests botanical and zoological. I've suffered missionaries, British colonial officers, unwashed philosophers, and the mineral ingratitude of the natives themselves. With Tibet, everyone grasps a different aspect, but no one comprehends the entirety. It's more than a country. It's an island looking down on the rest of the planet.

Our third morning at the lake, the yak is still bleating, the wind still blowing. Outside the tent it's very cold. I watch two of the porters rig up an ingenious little sling for their food pouches.

I'm interested in the racial origins of inventiveness. The gene for nomadism is clearly hereditary, given that racial groups like the Comanche, the Gypsies, and the Tibetans are all nomadic; what, then, of the gene for resourcefulness of a certain kind, or inventiveness? Might that not be an area in which such peoples are our equal, if not superior?

Beger, when I raise the notion, is intrigued by the idea, within limits.

This is a golden time for anthropologists, especially within the Reich. Lenz was certainly correct to remark that we're presently governed by the first widely influential leader to recognize that the central mission of politics is race hygiene. All of us in the sciences have profited by such a regime, even if we've also had to accommodate ourselves to a good deal of foolishness and boorishness. It is, we all agree, crucial to delineate precisely and objectively the hierarchical boundaries between the classes and the races, because scientific precision reassures the ordinary citizen that the law will protect his own security.