Laureate of The Wild: PETER MATTHIESSEN

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"He'd heard from a Mongolian ornithologist," says the writer, and you know there's only one major American novelist who could be speaking, "that there were quite a number of cranes in the eastern part of Mongolia. So we spent two weeks exploring the river systems there. There are only 15 species of crane, and seven of them are seriously endangered. And they're all very beautiful -- the biggest flying creatures on earth -- and they seem to me a wonderful metaphor. They require a lot of space, a lot of wilderness and clean water." + They are symbols of longevity. "And about half the population's on the mainland; the other half's in Japan." He smiles. "They've probably been separated for millions of years. I like that. It humbles one."

Peter Matthiessen is talking on a leisurely Sunday afternoon in a secluded sunlit space at his six-acre compound on Long Island, New York. His shaggy black yakling of a dog, Tess of the Baskervilles, is sitting at his feet, and he is stretching out his long, strikingly lean -- somewhat cranelike -- legs into the sun, picking up clumps of grass as he talks, and now and then turning off the tape recorder with a desultory toe. Already this week he's been to Idaho and Colorado to attend a conference on freedom of speech and the American novel. He's enjoyed a "very nice evening" with Salman Rushdie and turned in a 132-page manuscript to Conde Nast Traveler on his recent trip to eastern Nepal, from which he brought back photographs of prints that may support the existence of the yeti, or Abominable Snowman. He has two books just off the presses -- on Siberia and Africa. In between all these activities, he is working on the second part of his semifictional "Watson Trilogy," based on a real-life Florida murderer, and is preparing to lead a tour group into remote Bhutan for more investigations of the crane.

Not far away is the converted stable that is his meditation hall: after 20 years of study, Matthiessen was, three years ago, formally accredited as a Zen teacher. His Zen name -- Muryo, or Without Boundaries -- seems inspired. For what other Zen-minded patriarch can claim to be a founding editor of the Paris Review? How many other American novelists have written whole books in Caribbean patois that were influenced by the principles of classical Japanese art? How many other New Yorker writers have taken part-Cheyenne mercenaries for their alter egos? And which other scion of America's Eastern ruling class has devoted 628 pages and seven years of libel suits to defending the name of a young Native American charged with murder? While others pursue careers, Matthiessen has forged a path, and often it seems a high, chill path through what he calls "some night country on the dark side of the earth that all of us have to go to all alone."