An Immense Journey written by: Loren Eiseley

  I have been revisiting this book like a treasured graveyard (come on there IS such a thing). It seems that reading it again and again have sprung out seeds of thought in me that comes to life and I am not even aware of them until a certain time when I punder life and what keeps me going...I mean just living each day. Anthropologist,ecologist and poet Loren Eiseley added soul to the logical world of science.


  His essays compiled in this classic is a testament not only of his love for humanity but for the earth and the humility it bestowed upon him and everyone who shares his thoughts until this very day. I remember I was in high school when I read his essay called "The Bird and the Machine" . It's about an incident about the hawk he captured for the institute and which he set free: He lay there a long minute without hope, unmoving, his eyes still fixed on that blue vault above him. It must have been that he was already so far away in heart that he never felt the release from my hand. He never even stood. He just lay with his breast against the grass..... I didn't know what came over me but I remember weeping over the old book and the immense beauty of his story, his humanity.


   Loren Eiseley died in July 9,1977 but his contribution to science will always be remembered. Look for his other books and this one:The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and the memoir All the Strange Hours (1975).