Snow leopards

There are sometimes jobs that give the opportunity to place an animal in the centre of a piece and keep something of its essence thrumming there throughout.

This has been the case recently, and the animal has been the snow leopard. Research has put me on the alert for leopards everywhere. To stumble upon the image of one in a Roman mosaic in the North Wessex Downs validated the feeling that I just might catch sight of one when I was least expecting it. This leopard, on the floor of an area dedicated to the ancient Greek hero Orpheus, was a beautiful discovery.

Of course pivotally for me however the research involves the close and long observation of the animal, in the flesh. And so, though of course in captivity, I’ve been able to do this with regular visits to Marwell Zoo. What was immediately striking and continually apparent during the different times I spent in observation of the [curently] sole leopard was that she was often to be seen… the trick was you had to ‘see’ her first! Regularly she’d be out of her den resting on rocks, but so well camouflaged that one could easily pass by, (as visitors often did),and look, hang around a bit, look some more and not ‘find’ her.

And she was right there, in front of us, all along.

An unrelated job took me to Wellington, New Zealand last month and I found time to get to Wellington Zoo. Here, the same thing happened, though in this enclosure there were two so double the chance of a sighting. In the same way that one could spend hours not catching sight of a leopard, it was also possible all of a sudden to see her. There’s nothing else quite like it to set one’s heart racing.

If this thrill of the suddenness of a leopard appearing has that effect when she is in an enclosure- a place designed so that we humans have every chance of spending time in the presence of this great creature- how much more compelling to be graced with a sighting in the wild. The film The Velvet Queen takes one on that journey. This is a documentary to watch.

The suddenness of the appearance of the leopard has, necessarily, found its way into the piece we have been creating. This is indeed something of the essence of the leopard.