Quite literally, the blue sheep lives on the edge… marvel many a folk at the sheer nonchalance of the caprid in the face of vertical walls… yet ‘tis a rather ironic quest for safety, for even the most exceptional climbing skills or large herd numbers fail to get them out of that twitchy demeanour – forever looking over the shoulder, spooked by the ghost of the mountains, or the odd fox or raptor…
As they give company to whatever shrubbery manages to hang on to the mountain slope, one can’t help but wonder at the underlying melancholy of their existence… the difficulty of accepting one’s stature of being a mere cog in the ecosystem, never being allowed the leisure to bask in the glory of the breathtaking landscapes one calls home…
The inability of fauna to reminiscence, or if it’s there, our ability to comprehend the same is rather flummoxing… something that keeps the animosity twixt science and the arts lingering… submerge unflinchingly into the monotony of subsistence which defines the rules of life or to rise above and become more that the sum of its parts…
There is hardly any blue not is it a sheep (more a goat, goes the research)… an identity crisis that has little meaning for the ungulate, its brethren or predators… akin to political ideologies, be it capitalism or socialism, where the difference of opinion at the top means little to a factory worker resigned to his claustrophobic career, the blue sheep plays out a rather doleful tale… chewing until chewed…
Schaller would try to freeze them in his empirical constructs while Matthiessen would lend himself to being tunnelled through them to the larger philosophies of the cosmos… everyone tries to seek out the invisible evangelists the blue sheep congregate to… the violent ruts holding a mirror to religions and secretive lifestyles bordering towards the ascetical…
The male and his dominion, the mother with her calves… rocky cliffs and swaying grass… panorama from the top or camouflage among rocks… the blue sheep’s existence may be a blip on the backdrop of harsh and wide backcountry where it etches its footprints, yet for the man, it provides the few vestiges of faunal activity through which he understands the mountains…
Musings on Himalayan Blue Sheep…
