Personal Life
In his book The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen reports having had a somewhat tempestuous on-again off-again relationship with his wife Deborah, culminating in a deep commitment to each other made shortly before she was diagnosed with cancer. Matthiessen and Deborah had practiced Zen Buddhism. She died in New York City near the end of 1972.
In September of the following year came the field trip to Himalayan Nepal (above). Matthiessen later became a Buddhist priest of the White Plum Asanga. Before practicing Zen, Matthiessen was an early pioneer of LSD. He says his Buddhism evolved fairly naturally from his drug experiences.
In 1980, Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, born in Tanzania, in a Zen ceremony on Long Island, New York. They live in Sagaponack, New York.
In 2005, Matthiessen, along with Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin, was hailed in The Land's Wild Music by Mark Tredinnick, which analyzed how the landscape nourished and developed Matthiessen's writing.
Read more about this topic: Peter Matthiessen
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