Creatures of the Mind

Robert Hutchison noted in In the Tracks of the Yeti five reasons that have caused all Yeti expeditions to fail: they were too large and opulent; they were inappropriately equipped; they had poor understanding of the animal and its psychology; they were not static enough; they were inadequately prepared for physical hardships.

But imagine a less rational reason than those listed by Hutchison: perhaps the failure, as one Nepalese author put, lies in “The eternal lust for knowing what should not be known.” (Source: On the Yeti Trail) After all, local tradition holds that the Yeti will only show itself to those who believe in it—a point further illuminated by Himalayan writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen:

“How could I say that I wished to penetrate the secrets of the mountains in search of something still unknown that, like the Yeti, might well be missed for the very fact of searching?”

Even Ralph Izzard admitted to the great possibility of the Yeti as something beyond knowing at the conclusion of his 1954 Yeti expedition:

“There are, I know, many who rejoiced that we failed in our main objective—that a last great mystery remains in this much picked-over world to challenge adventurous spirits. With these sentiments I am bound, in part, to agree, for the world will not be a more attractive place to live in after we have touched everything.”

Today, one might say that the Yeti exists most assuredly as a creature both part of the mind and the world, in that boundless space between folklore and reality—where rich stories of the past, the psychological realities of the Himalayan people, modern “sightings” by Western climbers, and the existence of rare, high-altitude dwelling mammals all conjoin harmoniously to render a vision of a clumsy, hairy, shadowy, and sometimes vicious, creature.

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