This article was sent as a post and received June 12,2000.  It was taken from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/11/reviews/000611.11jarvist.html

COPIED FROM: NEW YORK TIMES on the web - BOOK REVIEW - June 11, 2000

My Quest for Yeti

Not Your Average Bear
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Has Reinhold Messner solved the mystery of the Abominable Snowman?

By LOUISE JARVIS

Contrary to the teaser title, Reinhold Messner does not capture, stuff and
mount on the page the anthropological find of the century -- the missing
link, the Abominable Snowman, the yeti. Instead, this mountaineering master
introduces us to a tall, shy, flat-footed species of brown bear with
terrible posture, short legs, long arms and a shaggy coif not unlike Mick
Jagger circa 1972. To Tibetans, this all too earthly creature is known as a
chemo, a word not coincidentally synonymous with ''yeti'' in parts of the
Himalayan highlands. Though it's rather like ripping the beard off Santa
Claus, Messner's ''My Quest for the Yeti'' employs a decade's worth of
research and educated guesswork to argue that Central Asia's Bigfoot is
nothing more than a supersize Paddington.

While Messner makes no mention of how the chemo-yeti connection escaped
previous zoologists and explorers, his own meandering path to this eureka
moment began innocently enough. In 1986, during a trek through Tibet, he
spotted a massive, unidentifiable biped loping through the forest. A pair of
oversize footprints added credence to his suspicion that the gigantic
silhouette was the legendary yeti. For anyone else stumbling through the
remote Tibetan highlands, with little more sustenance than some bacon and
hard bread, a yeti sighting could be chalked up to oxygen deprivation. Yet
Messner is made of steelier stuff; he was the first to climb Mount Everest
alone -- without bottled oxygen. On his numerous trips to the region (he
visited Nepal 30 times in 15 years, spent months at a time in Tibet, China,
Bhutan and India), he had listened skeptically to the Sherpas' dubious yeti
stories: how these wintry beasts abduct girls in the night, throw stones at
villagers, snack on yaks.

Suddenly -- in fact, a bit too suddenly to feel plausible -- he is a true
believer. Messner discounts the theory that the yeti is an archetypal image
concocted by the collective unconscious. For the next 10 years, he stalks
the myth's ''zoological blueprint,'' his obsession taking him from village
to Himalayan village, where he inquires about chemos and yetis and mooches
buttermilk, yogurt and barley flour from generous residents. He even
consults Sir Edmund Hillary's famous Sherpa companion, Tenzing Norgay. But
locals are reluctant to talk about yeti sightings for fear of bad luck. When
monks purport to have sacred remains of the creature stashed in their
monasteries, Messner reveals them to be fake. Meanwhile, he is chased by
vicious dogs, a member of his party contracts blood poisoning, and the
Chinese police, who don't like nosy Europeans traveling through Tibet, are
on his tail.

This chemo hunt would be couched in ample drama if only Messner weren't
oblivious of the gold mine of material his daily life produces. The
emotional range and intensity of his prose often have all the excitability
of Arnold Schwarzenegger reading the phone book aloud. Perhaps when you've
climbed all the things worth climbing and lost seven toes to frostbite,
nothing surprises you. It's the easy arrogance of the adventurer, the
controlled efficiency of the climber. But when he allows himself to take in
the postcard vistas, Messner proves that he's not incapable of satisfying
the armchair explorer. Viewed through his seen-it-all eyes, the influence of
Chinese occupation on Tibet -- the kitsch, congestion and concrete barracks
replacing the gabled rooftops, bright prayer flags and trees -- is freshly
devastating. His command of yeti tales is also impressive, from the story of
Zana, a domesticated yeti who in the late 1800's bore human children, to the
yeti corpse found in a Minnesota freezer in 1968.

Reading ''My Quest for the Yeti'' (translated from the German by Peter
Constantine), we never completely understand how an upright grizzly-type
bear could be mistaken for a giant monkey-man in the first place. This
nagging question leaves the door to the legend slightly ajar. Then again,
these days, with the grandest of mountains having been conquered, it's
probably for the best that our natural myths remain untamed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louise Jarvis is a freelance writer who contributes to Elle, Women's Sports
& Fitness and other magazines.

My Quest for Yeti

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E-mail address ShnSassy1@aol.com or louise@worldofthestrange.com
"Tis Strange-but true; For truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction!"

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