Loren Eiseley - Bev Russell, Library Director

(This column appeared in the October 28, 2007, Star-Herald)

Nebraska is justly proud to have produced many wonderful writers. Nature writer Loren Eiseley is one who is sometimes overlooked. A native Nebraskan, Eiseley was born in 1907, and Governor Dave Heineman has declared 2007 Eiseley’s centennial year. A number of activities are planned to honor Eiseley and his work. The feature article in today’s "Lifestyle" section of the "StarHerald" reports on one of those. A highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist and poet, Eiseley is sometimes credited with helping to inspire the environmental movement.

Loren Eiseley grew-up in and around Lincoln, Nebraska. His was an unhappy childhood of poverty and emotional neglect. His father, Clyde, was a hardware salesman who worked long hours and had little time to devote to his son. However, it was from his father, an amateur Shakespearean actor, that he developed a love for beautiful language and writing. His mother, Daisy, was prone to irrational behavior and may have been mentally ill.

In many ways Eiseley was a self-taught man. He was a voracious reader, having taught himself to read. After a visit to the natural history museum at the University of Nebraska’s Morrill Hall, he became fascinated with fossils. With his grandmother’s help, he made Neanderthal heads from clay. While still young he decided that he wanted to become a nature writer

After his father’s death Loren dropped out of high school and worked menial jobs. He later enrolled in the University of Nebraska with the financial support of his aunt and uncle but left school when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Forced by his disease to move to the western mountains and deserts, his restless spirit led him to spend a year riding the rails throughout the west. Eventually returning to Lincoln, he completed his BS in English and Geology/Anthropology and later received his Masters and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Loren Eiseley had a distinguished career in academia and as a writer and lecturer. He died July 9, 1977.

As a writer Eiseley was best known for his poetic essay style, which he used to explain complex scientific ideas to the general public. "Darwin’s Century" won the Phi Beta Kappa prize for the best book in science in 1958. Eiseley’s last book, a memoir, "All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life " is considered his masterpiece by many critics. In it he details his experiences as a hobo, riding the rails.

Eiseley’s first book, published in 1946, may be his best known work. "The Immense Journey" is a collection of essays about nature, many of which are based on his early Nebraska explorations. In the first chapter, The Slit, Eiseley describes his discovering the skull and the leg bone of two sabertooth tigers. The site of this discovery is near Chimney Rock. The animals died while locked in combat. The humanity and poetic beauty of his writing is clearly evident in this book. He writes,

"…I would never again excavate a fossil under conditions which led to so vivid an impression that I was already one myself. The truth is that we are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age."

Eiseley later immortalized this find with the 1973 poem, " The Innocent Assassins".

Once in the sun-fierce badlands of the west

in that strange country of volcanic ash and cones,…

we found a sabertooth, most ancient cat,

far down in all those cellars of dead time.

How appropriate that this sabertooth fossil, found by Eiseley and his party in 1932, is now on display in Morrill Hall— a place that so fascinated the young Loren Eiseley. A recently completed mural, "The Innocent Assassins", will soon be on display at the Wildcat Hills Nature Center. Loren Eiseley, a renowned Nebraskan, would be 100 years old this year. Congratulations to all whom are bringing his writings to our attention again.

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