Three Bows for Peter Matthiessen

One for the writer
One for the dharma teacher
One for the activist.
Landed on the other shore.
His work will survive, not least for The Snow Leopard, a luminous meditation on the Himalaya, but also for his devotion to Native American causes (In the Spirit of Crazy Horse & Indian Country are brilliant angry books), and to Buddhism, documented in Nine Headed Dragon River). The lawsuits over In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, stalled publication but kept the name of the political prisoner/Sioux activist, Leonard Peltier current.
I once saw Matthiessen describe the death of George Armstrong Custer as ‘possibly the most richly deserved death in American history’.

He’s an extraordinary figure, of whom it should be said of nearly every extraordinary, countercultural, adventurous journey that he did it first and he did it best.