One of the books was The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley, and that was the spring of 1967. “I discovered him as a senior in engineering.
Chen and me, we actually first encountered Eiseley at the same point in our lives - in college. He often takes his copy of Eiseley’s book Invisible Pyramid on his travels.ĭespite the major differences in life experiences between Dr. Chen’s love for nature has taken him all over the world, including the spires of Tsingy Forest in Madagascar. Consider him a certified Loren Eiseley expert. Chen is the steely-eyed loner we meet in a saloon who agreed to join the adventure and then saves us many, many times from certain death. He’s the president of the Loren Eiseley Society, a group dedicated to raising awareness for Eiseley’s work. “Eiseley is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, and is shining a light to all of us saying, ‘This, my children, is the direction I suggest you take.’” A mosaic of Eisley’s most famous quote (and me) near Boston Harbor. Everywhere I looked, someone was inspired by Eiseley.
Seeking freedom, I fled to the East Coast, and still, halfway through a cup of milk tea, I looked up and found Eiseley’s words on the side of a Boston Harbor mosaic. I started seeing it printed on coffee mugs and in environmental advocacy posts on Instagram.
I swear that quote haunted me like a ghost. “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” I read a copy of The Immense Journey, Eiseley’s most famous collection of essays, and within it, his most famous quote. Once I started looking for him, I found him everywhere. A writer, educator, anthropologist and scholar of great renown with a lifetime tie to Lincoln, Nebraska, Eiseley was made for this project. He united the natural world with the human condition, something especially powerful in our modern age of climate and environmental change. In the realm of naturalist writing - think Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau - Eiseley breathed new life into the genre. I had never heard his name before, but I suppose I should have. Come with me, and we can piece together lost memories and old essays, just maybe finding the bigger picture in the process.
These are the movers and shakers of the land, water and sky we proudly call home. Welcome to Greats of the Plains, a discovery into the voices you may not know of but certainly should. I’m a lifelong writer - fond of any medium from rhetorical research to short stories to opinion columns - who’s just starting to use her curiosity and enthusiasm to tell stories that deserve to be heard. But, I am a storyteller with a passion to explore. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not an ecologist. I’m a small town girl with a family tree that has generations of roots in this river basin. I’m a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a story production intern with Platte Basin Timelapse.
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