Another of my favorite anthropologists and philosophers is Loren Eiseley, whose most well-known book, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, was published in 1946. His essays combine his knowledge of science with a powerful literary writing style. One of my favorites is "The Star Thrower", which has become an American folk story as others have adapted it. I have never found any of the "folksy" versions as powerful as Eiseley's own amazing essay, and I can only recommend that you read the entire piece of writing.

At the time he wrote the essay, Eiseley was in a period of great agony in his mind and spirit. He said, "I was the inhumanly stripped skeleton without voice, without hope, wandering alone upon the shores of the world." He walked the beaches of Costabel, watching the greedy collectors gathering shells to sell to tourists. Then he said:

Ahead of me, over the projecting point, a gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection had sprung shimmering into existence. Somewhere toward its foot I discerned a human figure stand, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow, though unconscious of his position. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand.

Eventually he stooped and flung the object beyond the breaking surf. I labored toward him over a half-mile of uncertain footing. By the time I reached him the rainbow had receded ahead of us, but something of its color still ran hastily in many changing lights across his features. He was starting to kneel again.

In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.

"It's still alive," I ventured.

"Yes," he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sank in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.

"It may live," he said, "if the offshore pull is strong enough." He spoke gently, and across his bronzed worn face the light still came and went in subtly altering colors.

"There are not many come this far," I said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. "Do you collect?"

"Only like this," he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the short. "And only for the living." He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water.

"The stars," he said, "throw well. One can help them."

Eiseley then goes back to his room, still caught in his existential despair--until he realizes that we are not just victims of natural selection but able to rise above it through our capacity for love and pity. We cannot expect the rest of the natural world to "love" us--but that does not take away our responsibility to love and care for that world. So he leaves his room to seek the thrower:

On a point of land, as though projecting into a domain beyond us, I found the star thrower. In the sweet rain-swept morning, that great many-hued rainbow still lurked and wavered tentatively beyond him. Silently I sought and picked up a still-living star, spinning it far out into the waves. I spoke once briefly. "I understand," I said. "Call me another thrower." Only then I allowed myself to think, He is not alone any longer. After us there will be others.

One of my favorite "pilgrimages" was to Carmel CA to see Tor House and Hawk Tower, both built by the poet Robinson Jeffers for his wife Una and their twin sons. He used horses and pulleys to lift the large stones from the beach and place them in these unique structures. The website www.torhouse.org has much more information.

As a poet, Robinson Jeffers concentrated on the wilder aspects of nature. He loved living by the Pacific and had little patience with the foibles of humanity. Here is one of my favorites:


Civilized, crying how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold, look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.
Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;
Things are the God, you will love God, and not in vain,
For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length
You will look back along the stars' rays and see that even
The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.
Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength
And sickness; but now you are free, even to become human,
But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.

One of the characteristics I love about Henry David Thoreau was his ability to notice the smallest parts of nature and hear what they had to tell him. He said, of snowflakes:

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat."--Henry David Thoreau, 1856

Another time he pointed out:

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

For me, it's important to slow down enough to really "see" some of the smaller wonders of our world, so hear is a poem called "Gratitude" that includes many of them.

Gratitude

What did you notice?

The dew snail;

the low-flying sparrow;

the bat, on the wind, in the dark;

big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;

the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;

the sweet-hungry ants;

the uproar of mice in the empty house;

the tin music of the cricket’s body;

the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;

the little bluebirds in their hot box;

the salty talk of the wren,

then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

What did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;

the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;

the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;

at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;

then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,

her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her

recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her

sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;

the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;

the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;

the tall, blank banks of sand;

the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;

the sea and its triangles;

the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green breast of the hummingbird;

the eye of the pond;

the wet face of the lily;

the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;

the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;

the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeveof the first snow—
so the gods shake us from our sleep.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Most of the individuals who have inspired me are naturalists and scientists, but I wanted to start this first post with a poem that has helped me through many difficult times. One of my favorite quotations from Anne Frank reads: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature... Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be…As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that there will always be comfort for every sorrow. I firmly believe that nature brings solace to all troubles."

Berry's poem reflects that same idea--


The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.