Hemingway's Leopard And My Mountain Lion

For those who have missed the big Connecticut news story of the summer (overlooking the theft of that $17,500 scarf), a mountain lion was spotted more than a month in backcountry Greenwich and killed by and SUV up in Milford. Recently, thanks to some fancy noodling in a lab, scientists have matched that mountain lion’s DNA to the DNA of a group of mountain lions living in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

That means that this mountain lion traveled something like 1,500 miles over the past year or so—from South Dakota to Connecticut. The scientists, for a change, are just as baffled as the laypeople. The longest previously recorded wandering of a dispersing (“mate-searching”) male mountain lion was 750 miles. Our lion friend remarkably doubled that.

A mountain lion prowls Yellowstone National Park; via Wikimedia Commons

All his searching, however, was apparently for naught. Mountain lions, after all, are not so frequently found in Connecticut. The last wild sighting was…well…120 years ago. What was the silly guy doing? seems to be the question national media have been asking in regards to this far-wandering feline. And as far as we know, there’s no answer. Given that, I could not help but recall a certain famous epigraph to a certain famous story:

“Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and it is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Nghe Nghe”, the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”

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The literarily-inclined will have recognized the opening to Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” (If you did not, have no fear, there’s culture to be had here! [ too snobbish? did the rhyme dull the blow?].) Perhaps even more than the story, I’ve loved that simple epigraph. There are gobs and gobs of literary criticism out there analyzing what the leopard means—some connect it to the Bible, others to Hemingway’s life, some even claim that it is true and that there are other books out there that site the same fanciful leopard. Personally, I just love the notion of that leopard up there on the mountain, (seemingly) searching for meaning.

Mt. Kilimanjaro; via Wikimedia Commons

The search for meaning or God—after all, he is near the “House of God”—is what life is about. I can’t help but think that the implied author, writing “no one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude” totally misses the point. Everyone should know what the leopard was seeking (assuming we’re all engaged to read metaphors into everyday life…but whatever…). The leopard’s looking for meaning and life like the rest of us! What are people doing up at the top of Kilimanjaro? Looking for the meaning! They’re looking for life! (Exclamation points!!!)

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My insane musings aside, it’s a curious exercise to look at our Milford lion with a status similar to Hemingway’s leopard. What was he seeking here? If anything, I’m sort of tempted to peg this mountain lion as antithetical to the leopard. The leopard seeks everything—while the lion seeks nothing. The lion, slinking through the backyards of wealthy suburbanites, is like an image out of Cheever, another reminder to all us suburbanites that we are living cold, emotionless lives. (Okay, so that’s not totally fair to Cheever’s work, I know.)

Again, these are just ramblings. But all of this aside, I’d love to think that the mountain lion might have been a reminder to all of us to keep seeking the meaning, whether in an office in Greenwich or at the top of a mountain. How’s that for some totally ridiculous inspiration?