There are books that change the way we see the world forever. Books that, long after we put them down, we remember where we were when we read them, the details and the feelings they engendered and the knowledge that our lives have taken its course in large part because of that book. Such is the case for me with Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey.

It was required reading the summer before I entered college. And now, rereading it more than 30 years later, I am still in awe of Eiseley's use of language, his sense of mystery and his experiences as a naturalist. Each essay transcends the here and now with the perspective of a seasoned geologist, the wonder of a philosophical scientist and the soul of a poet. Whether he looks 10 million years in the past or considers fish that walk or the evolving future, Eiseley recognizes that we humans are also but a speck in the process of evolution. And yet, he marvels at the “enormous interlinked complexity of life” (p.63) in its every day forms. He reminds us of how very amazing it is that life on this planet ever happened, or the importance of flowers in creating an environment for mammals. He describes just how miraculously unusual the growth of human babies is and the empathetic communication of birds. And always, as he peers back in time and forward, he asks the question he posed when confronting a skull embedded in a long ago layer of silt: “The creature had never lived to see a man; and I, what was it I was never going to see?” (p. 5)

His descriptions are sensual and tactile. One feels the character of the land as he describes the light and texture of the settings. Of floating down the Platte River he wrote:

“The sky wheeled over me. For an instant, as I bobbed into the main channel, I had the sensation of sliding down the vast tilted face of the continent. It was then I felt the cold needles of the alpine springs at my fingertips, and the warmth of the Gulf pulling me southward. Moving with me, leaving its taste upon my mouth and spouting under me in dancing springs of sand, was the immense body of the continent itself, flowing like the river was flowing, grain by grain, mountain by mountain, down to the sea.” (p.19)

Describing the Badlands he wrote:

“Nothing grows among its pinnacles; there is no shade except under great toadstools of sandstone whose bases have been eaten to the shape of wine glasses by wind. Everything is flaking, cracking, disintegrating, wearing away in the long, imperceptible weather of time. The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that waste are the colors that flame in the lonely sunsets on dead planets. Men come there but rarely, and for one purpose only, the collection of bones. (p. 171)

Or looking at a glade in a wood:

'The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke…the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glad was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.” (p. 174)

There are aspects to Eiseley's book that are outdated. His musing whether a rocket would ever go into outer space takes one by surprise. Many of the issues that concern us -- environmental pollution, population and nuclear crises, global warming -- are not concerns of his, in part because of his time. But because so much of his interest lies beyond the swift markings of here and now, it does not feel outdated. Even though our scientific knowledge base has increased by light years from the time Eiseley was writing, his questions still remain relevant. For example, in the field of brain research, we now know far more about the role, the mapping and the interplay of the brain then we did then. But Eiseley's question - how did man get his brain? - still has not been answered and his description of the argument between Charles Darwin and his colleague Alfred Russel Wallace is a good reminder of both how some discussions keep reappearing of necessity.

I would hope that High School juniors or seniors, would be as moved by this, “the prowlings of one mind which has sought to explore, to understand, and to enjoy the miracles of this world, both in and out of science” (p. 12) as I was then and now. But in this swiftly moving culture of manufactured pleasures, I fear that Eiseley may only appeal to a certain kind of person: the kind for whom experiences of the beauty, hope and wonder of the natural world are important, the seeker who marvels at life and asks why, the traveler who is willing to reflect upon the immense journey. Would that this describes all of our students! But for those who it does describe, Eiseley is required reading.


review © 2004 by Jane Rechtman and RSiSS
The Masters School