The Unexpected Universe

by Loren Eiseley

  I arose then and, biting a plum that tasted bitter, I limped off down the ravine. One hundred thousand years had made little difference—at least, to me. The secret was to travel always in the first world, not the second; or, at least, to know at each crossroad which world was which. I went on, clutching for stability the flint knife in my pocket. A blue smoke like some final conflagration swept out of the draw and preceded me. I could feel its heat. I coughed, and my eyes watered. I tried as best I could to keep pace with it as it swirled on. There was a crackling behind me as though I myself were burning, but the smoke was what I followed. I held the sharp flint like a dowser’s twig, cold and steady in my hand.

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  Chronology

  1907–12

  Born Loren Corey Eiseley in Lincoln, Nebraska, on September 3, 1907, the only child of Clyde and Daisy Corey Eiseley. Mother, thirty-two, grew up in Iowa; deaf and reclusive, she takes in sewing to help support the family. Father, thirty-eight, works as a hardware-store clerk in Fremont, Nebraska; the son of a prosperous German-immigrant hardware merchant, as a younger man he managed the small
Opera House in Norfolk, Nebraska (which his father owned), acted in plays, and committed much Shakespeare to memory, but his family’s fortunes collapsed after a bad investment in a sugar beet factory. Fifteen-year-old half-brother Leo, from the first of father’s two previous marriages, begins high school in January 1909 but soon drops out to work as a messenger boy. Family moves from Fremont to Lincoln in 1910; Leo leaves home the following year, becoming a telegraph operator.

  1913–17

  Begins school in Lincoln in 1913. Four years later, family moves to Aurora, Nebraska, where father continues to work as a hardware-store clerk.

  1918–21

  Paternal grandfather Charles Frederick dies on February 2, 1918, and maternal grandfather Milo on December 12. Taking a job as a traveling salesman, father moves family back to Lincoln; he survives a case of influenza. Loren visits the Museum at the University of Nebraska with his maternal uncle Buck, an attorney; for his twelfth birthday, receives a birdhouse and a copy of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. Leo, now married to Mamie Harris and the father of a two-year-old daughter, returns to Lincoln in 1920; Loren visits them often. Writes in an eighth-grade essay: “I have selected Nature Writing for my vocation because at this time in my life it appeals to me more than any other subject.”

  1922–24

  Leo and family relocate to Colorado Springs. Loren enters Lincoln High School in September 1922; moves in with Aunt Grace and Uncle Buck. Unhappy in school, does not return the following January and takes a menial job. Uncle arranges for his enrollment at Teachers College High School where he becomes a junior in September 1923; joins the football team. Buck gives him a copy of Henry Fairfield Osborn’s Origin and Evolution of Life.

  1925

  During his senior year in high school, captains the football team and is elected class president; acts in the class play, Walter Ben Hare’s Kicked out of College. With three friends, buys a 1919 Model T Ford and drives to Los Angeles in search of summer employment, camping along the way. Back in Lincoln, enters the University of Nebraska in September, living alternately with his parents and his aunt and uncle, his uncle helping to pay his tuition. Begins a correspondence with Mabel Langdon, a former student teacher at his high school who had taken her first job in rural Arnold, Nebraska; they exchange poems.

  1926

  Studies evolution and genetics, elementary paleontology, social psychology, and applied psychology in summer school, but takes only two courses in the fall; failing one, is forced to take a semester’s leave. Travels widely throughout the western states on freight trains.

  1927

  Reenters the University of Nebraska in the summer. Becomes associate editor of the recently established literary magazine Prairie Schooner; publishes poems and prose sketches.

  1928

  Does not reenroll at the University of Nebraska in January; takes job on the graveyard shift at a chicken hatchery. Father, diagnosed with stomach and liver cancer, dies on March 31; unable to afford mortgage payments, mother moves in with uncle and aunt. Returns to school in September.

  1929

  Diagnosed with influenza and a pulmonary infection, is urged by doctors to take a rest cure; spends time in Manitou Springs, Colorado, to recuperate. Returns to Lincoln in the fall; his doctor recommends further rest in a dry climate. “The Deserted Homeland,” a poem, appears in Poetry in December.

  1930

  Travels to California, where he becomes caretaker of a property in the Mojave Desert, near Lancaster. Mabel Langdon visits. His health improved, makes his way back to Lincoln by freight train, living as a hobo; arrives “in a dreadful state.” Re-enrolls in classes in September, taking Introductory Anthropology and Field & Museum Techniques.

  1931

  During spring vacation, joins a group of about a dozen students on an archaeological dig led by Dr. William Duncan Strong; they excavate remains of sixteenth-century Pawnee village in central Nebraska. On May 3 becomes president of the Poetry Society, part of the Nebraska Writers’ Guild. Travels through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah in June, camping with Helen Hopt, a young teacher, and another couple. Spends August and September before classes as part of the Morrill Paleontological Expedition (the “South Party”); discovers a promising fossil site in Banner County, Nebraska.

  1932

  Returns to Banner County with the South Party in May, June, and July, unearthing bones of extinct mastodon, rhinoceros, camel, and saber-toothed cat.

  1933

  Graduates from University of Nebraska in June with a B.A. in anthropology and English; joins the South Party for third summer. Visits Taos, New Mexico, introducing himself to literary heiress Mabel Dodge Luhan. In August discovers remains of a large Brontothere and the skull of a saber-toothed cat. Moves to Philadelphia in the fall, beginning graduate school in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Visits Harold Vinal, editor of the poetry magazine Voices and a longtime correspondent, in New York City, and his half-brother Leo and family, who now live in Philadelphia.

  1934

  Spends time on weekends hiking in the New Jersey Pine Barrens with Frank Speck, a favorite professor. In June, travels to Carlsbad, New Mexico, with another graduate student, Joseph B. Townsend Jr., on a fellowship; over six weeks they excavate a Native American burial site in a cave in what is now Guadalupe Mountains National Park. (At the end of the summer’s work, celebrating in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the two are arrested for “doing something ridiculous,” and are released only after the intervention of the American consul.) Visits Santa Fe with Mabel Langdon and Dorothy Thomas, a young writer from Lincoln; they attend the funeral of writer Mary Austin, and tour Pecos Pueblo and Chaco Canyon. Returning to Penn, moves into International House with two friends; is awarded a scholarship. Later remembers the time as “one of the happiest in my life.” Completes master’s thesis, “A Review of the Paleontological Evidence Bearing upon the Age of the Scottsbluff Bison Quarry and Its Assorted Artifacts.”

  1935

  Part of thesis is accepted for publication in American Anthropologist. Receives master’s degree on February 9. In June, joins eight others at the Lindenmeier archaeological site in Larimer County, Colorado, seeking skeletal remains of Folsom man; finds a Folsom arrowhead in the neck vertebrae of a Pleistocene bison, and gathers mollusk specimens hoping they may help date the party’s finds. On August 20, learns of the death of his uncle Buck, and returns to Lincoln for his funeral. Unable to afford tuition at Penn without uncle’s support, moves in with family in Lincoln; Mabel Langdon helps pay his tuition at the University of Nebraska, where he takes graduate courses in sociology and German.

  1936

  Takes a W.P.A. job in February, assisting the editor of Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State; writes essays on Nebraska geology, paleontology, and Native American culture. Returns to Penn in the fall with the aid of a fellowship. Goes on canoeing and hiking trips with Frank Speck, now his dissertation advisor. Maternal grandmother Malvina dies on December 17.

  1937

  Receives Ph.D. degree in June after Speck approves his dissertation, “Three Indices of Quaternary Time and Their Bearing on the Problems of American History: A Critique.” Spends three weeks excavating eighteenth-century Native American burial sites in Doniphan County, Kansas, with a party from the National Museum of Natural History. Accepts position as assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Kansas, moving to Lawrence; subsequently teaches courses on General Anthropology, the American Indian, Primitive Society, Peoples of the Pacific, the Evolution of Culture, and the Elements of Sociology. In August is reunited with Mabel in New Mexico; they stay with Dorothy Thomas at Mary Austin’s house in Santa Fe, visit Taos, and meet Frieda Von Richtofen Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence’s widow, at her home nearby.

  1938

  On weekends, investigates potential archaeological sites near Lawrence, and does some excavating work in early August. Visits Albuquerque with Mabel; they marry there on August 29 in a sma
ll informal ceremony. Lacking the funds to set up a joint household, she returns to her family in Lincoln, working as a curator at the university art gallery, he to bachelor quarters in Lawrence.

  1939

  In April, with Bert Schultz of Nebraska State Museum, announces archaeological discoveries in southeastern Nebraska; with Schultz, signs contract to write book “They Hunted the Mammoth: The Story of Ice Age Man” for Macmillan (later cancelled because of the war). Helps to prepare an exhibit on the works of Robinson Jeffers, the modern writer he claims most to admire, at the University of Nebraska Library. Beginning in the summer, is joined by wife Mabel in Lawrence. Signs a contract with publisher Thomas Y. Crowell to write a textbook on general anthropology.

  1940

  In June, begins postdoctoral fellowship in physical anthropology at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History. Mabel, arriving in New York in September, works part-time as a typist for crime writer Rex Stout. Registers for military service in October. Friend Dorothy Thomas rents a vacant apartment downstairs; she takes the Eiseleys to parties and introduces them to her circle.

  1941

  Working with Harry L. Shapiro at Columbia, undertakes biometric studies of Basket Maker skeletons excavated in Arizona. Returns to Kansas in September.

  1942

  In January, as second author with Frank Speck, publishes “Montagnais-Naskapi Bands and Family Hunting Districts of the Central and Southeastern Labrador Peninsula,” in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Application for a commission in the Army Air Corps is rejected in July due to his weak eyesight; fears he may soon be drafted as an infantryman. Publishes “What Price Glory? The Counterplaint of an Anthropologist” in American Sociological Review in December, along with “The Folsom Mystery,” the first of a series of articles in Scientific American.

  1943

  In the spring becomes an instructor in human gross anatomy in the short-handed University of Kansas Medical School; receives a draft deferment on the basis of his teaching responsibilities.