Who was Loren Eiseley? He was born September 2, 1907 in Lincoln, Nebraska, the only child of his father's second marriage. His father's first wife was his great love, and she succumbed to disease at an early age. This first marriage produced a son, Loren's half-brother, Leo, who was 13 years his senior. The second union was apparently one of convenience rather than emotional attachment.

Loren's father was an itinerant actor who had a deep interest in, and love of, language. His mother was a self taught artist of some talent who, due to a childhood illness, was profoundly deaf and barely capable of intelligible speech. From these two disparate people, Loren received the creative gifts and sensibilities which would support him throughout his life. (Angyal, 3)

Loren Eiseley was a man who nurtured solitary isolation, keeping himself at a respectful distance from most social interaction. He described himself as a 'fugitive' in time (The Night Country, 4), a man who lived as a fugitive in society, though he broke no laws. His essays on evolution carry the history of man as a fugitive in Nature. The roots of this self-view as outsider were formed early in his childhood. He described this period as being 'unhappy' (All The Strange Hours, 22-32), and placed the blame on his mother. Though he was apparently able, as an adult, to reach some understanding of her situation, it is not clear that he was ever able to forgive her. He learned early to avoid the company of other children in order to prevent their possible contact with (and expected subsequent derision of) his mother, who humiliated him with her odd histrionics: Stamping feet, flailing arms, and guttural gruntings.

He created for himself a more solitary existence in which he read and explored extensively. His life was reflected in his writings. As he pondered the nature of life and evolution, he used scenes from his own life experience as metaphor for the greater picture he hoped to convey. His personal experiences and observations were used to emphasize the greater history of mankind's distancing from all other animals. In this way he explored our evolutionary separation from Nature and denial of our own wildness.

Eiseley's writings celebrate the marvelous in Nature. His 'Nature' was not simply the physical biosphere. It included also the intangible spirit world, ruled as much by instinct as conscious thought. He refers to man as the 'dream animal' (The Immense Journey, 120) whose enlarged brain allowed development of an alternate, largely self-created, universe. The peculiar evolutionary history of the human brain separated man from all other organisms, whose evolutionary track was centered on adaptive physiological change. Man is unique in having developed both a concept of time, and a symbolic language. We alone are able to communicate across time by our written word, though in death, as with all creatures, all accumulated knowledge stored in our brains is lost. He quoted Shakespeare for an explanation of how this divergent evolutionary path came about: "It hath been taught us from the primal state/ That he which is was wished until he were."( The Night Country, 55). Eiseley saw man's use and development of tools as having replaced the need for physical adaptation. Machines replaced the need for more efficient physical design. This allowed us to direct our evolutionary energies into our brains.

Eiseley was an insomniac who often worked at night. Darkness and the unknown are frequently recurring themes. He contemplated and discussed the evolutionary basis for mankind's nearly universal fear of these qualities.

He was a man of many, varied interests. He began as a poet, left school to become a drifter, returned to study archaeology, received a doctorate in and subsequently taught anthropology, and ultimately returned to poetry. He somehow managed to draw all of these experiences and interests together as an essayist. He maintained throughout life a deep sense of curiosity and wonder. His universe was one of great mystery and beauty irreducible to hard fact. He became disillusioned with the restrictions of science and increasingly began to view anthropology as "The science of man eternally trying to understand himself and never succeeding."(Angyal, 33) He mourned the loss of the sense of wonder from modern culture. The answers that he sought through science could not be found in that restrictive world of documented fact and data; aesthetic impression was of equal value to him. He was highly regarded as a scientist, naturalist, and essayist. His independence raised some opposition from hardline scientists who objected to his inclusion of the spiritual in his articles. The intangible has no place in the 'hard facts only' world of science. It says quite a lot about the man that he was able to maintain his position and respect, while continuing to write as he pleased, in the face of such opposition.

His style might be described as anthropomorphic regarding his musings on animal behavior, but I use this term with some reservation. True, he interpreted the actions of animals as having been reasoned to some degree, but he took pains to write from an animal perspective. He recognized a separate form of consciousness in them. He wrote as a participant, a fellow creature, with shared experience and knowledge. He did not write as a man observing an animal and grasping at human qualities to apply as explanation for its actions.

What is evolution? Eiseley used the story of a derelict he once observed sleeping on a train to illustrate his belief. When the conductor came to collect for tickets, the derelict simply handed him a wad of bills and said 'Give me a ticket to where ever it is.'. He chose no destination, accepting whatever was chosen by the conductor ( The Night Country, 63). Eiseley conjectured that this scene was repeated at the end of every line; endlessly traveling yet alighting nowhere, directionless yet compelled to move.

Eiseley had a unique vision and gift for expression. He had an innate understanding of animal behavior, and also that of his fellow humans. He was a watcher: a careful observer of the world. He moved through it, but rarely interacted in its processes. He was a complex man, a study of contradictions. He was a scientist who disputed science, a melancholy loner who was happily married, and a lover of animals who kept no pets (he lived in an apartment which banned pets, though he could easily have afforded his own property). He had no children. Loren Eiseley died in 1977. He was survived by his wife, and his writings.

Angyal, Andrew J. Loren Eiseley. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983

Eiseley, Loren. All The Strange Hours. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975

Heuer. The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987