This is another installment of my long ago column from The Hellbender Press.
​Nature’s Bookshelf by Ray Zimmerman

            Before popular films portrayed Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and The Scorpion King, a real life archaeologist took up his pen and popularized the search for meaning in the past. Loren Eiseley, archaeologist, anthropologist, and paleontologist, authored numerous popular books which traced the story of our past and showed us the potential for an even greater future. A review of his book The Star Thrower appeared in the Chicago Tribune and stated that he “captured the joy of human experience, observing with a gifted, perceptive eye those intimations not visible to others.” He was born to an impoverished family; by today’s standards almost certainly dysfunctional. From these humble beginnings he rose to become a celebrated scholar and popular author.

            Eiseley could read and write before he entered school. The summer before he entered first grade, he wrote a booklet with the misspelled title “Animal Aventures,” written on stapled notebook paper. During his childhood he obtained a book about aquariums and built homemade aquariums in which creatures thrived.
At the University of Nebraska, Eiseley struggled with night work at a hatchery where he awakened hourly to turn the eggs. He checked the supply of kerosene in the heaters and made certain no fires were about to blaze. At that time he contracted tuberculosis and went to live in a cabin near Death Valley while he recovered. He rode the rails as a depression era hobo before he returned to school.

           Eiseley continued to write after he dropped studies in English to focus on anthropology and archaeology. Some his poems and essays appeared in Prairie Schooner, a reputable literary journal. He became a dig supervisor in the archaeology field classes. He also got summer work as a bone hunter for the Morill Museum, which gave him extensive field experience in paleontology.

                After completion of his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, Eiseley taught at the University of Kansas and at Oberlin College in Ohio. He returned to the University of Pennsylvania to chair the department of Anthropology, the very position formerly held by his mentor, Frank Speck. He was eventually promoted to Provost.

              Eiseley’s memories of Speck prompted him to leave the position of Provost and apply for teaching and field work positions. When officials at the University of Pennsylvania learned of his plans, they created the Benjamin Franklin Professorship and offered him the first appointment. He remained at the University of Pennsylvania for the rest of his career, enjoying the freedom to conduct research and write.

               Eiseley was already 50 years old when he published his first book, The Immense Journey. This single work firmly established him as a literary naturalist. It tells the story of human history, from the beginning of time until the present.

           His second book, Darwin’s Century, received the national Phi Beta Kappa science award. In this book, he demonstrated that Darwin drew on other thinkers when he developed the theory of evolution. The Firmament of Time, his third book, was based on his lectures on the history of science, delivered as a guest lecturer at the University of Cincinnati.

          In his later years, Eiseley resumed publishing his poetry. In “The Face of the Lion,” an autobiographical poem, he confronts both painful memories of his childhood and the issues of aging. It is perhaps the most powerful poem in his first volume, Notes of an Alchemist.  He also speaks of endangered species and the loss of diversity of life in his second volume of poems, The Innocent Assassins. 

             Eiseley continued to write until his death of pancreatic cancer at age seventy. He published three books of poetry and at least eight nonfiction books during his lifetime. He selected essays, poems, and segments of his books to appear in an anthology, The Star Thrower. Published posthumously, it is an excellent introduction to Eiseley’s work.

             A final work, The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley, contains poems, notes, and fragments of stories. Kenneth Heuer, Eiseley’s editor, prepared the manuscript.

            Eiseley’s writing style and his attitude toward life is perhaps best illustrated by a passage from his autobiography, All the Strange Hours. In the passage, he recalls his days of teaching anatomy at the University of Kansas Medical School. He assisted a lecturer who performed a laboratory demonstration with a living dog. The emotions of the passage speak for themselves:

               “I shook my head wearily. There is a man, a very great experimentalist, who has said that to extend ethics to animals is unutterable folly. Man cannot do this and learn, learn even to save himself. Each one of us alive has inevitably, unknowingly taken something from other lives. I thought of my steeled professional friend. I thought, though I did not say it to my concerned acquaintance, that the experiment that I had witnessed, in my judgment, was needless.

               ‘Just one more day,’ those beseeching eyes seemed to haunt me. They do still. I have stood since in some of the cleanest, most hygienic laboratories in the world. I have also watched dirty, homeless dogs and cats trot on to what must have been for most of them starvation, disease, or death by accident. I have never called a humane society because I, too, am an ex-wanderer who would have begged for one more hour of light, no matter how dismal. Rarely among those many thousands have I been able to protect, save, or help. This day I have recounted is gone from the minds of everyone. As for me, I have sought refuge in the depersonalized bones of past eras on the watersheds of the world.”

​Sidebar: Works by and about Loren Eiseley
 
The Immense Journey 1957
As Eiseley’s first book length work, The Immense Journey established his literary career. It is an evolutionist view of the history of humanity and the earth. The narrative begins with the first plants and animals to emerge onto dry land, and the changes that they wrought on their world.
 
Darwin’s Century 1958
This book won the National Phi Beta Kappa science prize. In this book Eiseley demonstrates that the Darwin’s work drew from various thinkers of his time, including Malthus, Hutton, Cuvier, Lamark, and Wallace.
 
The Firmament of Time 1960
This book won the John Burroughs medal for nature writing and the Lecomte du Nouy foundation award. The chapters are drawn from lectures on the history of science delivered at the University of Cincinnati where Eiseley served as a visiting lecturer one summer.
 
The Mind as Nature 1962
This work was a lecture given to the John Dewey Society and published as a monograph. He analyzed the teacher’s role, particularly as applied to his own deprived background. The work was later incorporated as a chapter in his book, The Night Country.
 
Francis Bacon and the Modern Dilemma 1962
This was later reissued as The Man who Saw through Time.
 
The Invisible Pyramid 1970
As the pharos of ancient Egypt constructed pyramids and acquired artifacts to help them journey to the heavens, so modern man journeys to the stars. Eiseley also compares space flight to the dispersal phase of other living things.
 
The Night Country 1971
Autobiographical essays on human development, the scientific process, and the quest for meaning in the universe.
 
Notes of an Alchemist 1972 - Poetry
This was his first book of poetry. “The Face of the Lion” is a seminal work which reveals the author’s history and personality. Other poems speak of vanished animals and cultures.
 
The Innocent Assassins – Poetry 1973
Eiseley addresses vanished prehistoric animals in the poem, “Why did they Go.” Other poems celebrate vanished cultures and species becoming extinct in our own time.
 
The Man who Saw through Time 1973
Revised and expanded version of Francis Bacon and the Modern Dilemma
 
All the Strange Hours – The Excavation of a Life – Autobiography 1975
This book includes very little information about Mabel, his wife. He wanted to respect her private nature. Most of the stories are drawn from his early days in Nebraska. Others take place on the rails. Later chapters are devoted to observations of the world at large.
 
Another Kind of Autumn – Poetry 1977
The author tells more stories of vanishing species. This is also a work in which he confronts his own mortality. It was published immediately before his death.
 
The Star Thrower (Posthumous) 1978
Eiseley selected the essays and poems to appear in this anthology just before his death. It encompasses most of his career and is an excellent introduction to his work.
 
Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X (Posthumous) 1979
This volume is comprised of several previously published articles examining the possible influence of Edward Blyth on Darwin’s thinking.
 
All the Night Wings – Poetry (Posthumous) 1979
Many poems in this volume were previously published, though not in book form. Others were drawn from his notebooks.
 
The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley 1987
Edited and with a remembrance by Kenneth Heuer
This book includes poems, essays and fragments from his notebooks. It also includes a lengthy portion of a novel in progress.
 
Loren Eiseley 1983 by Andrew J. Angyal
From Twayne’s United States Authors Series, Warren French, Editor
 
Fox at the Wood’s Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley 1990 by Gale E. Christianson

I published this one several years ago in The Hellbender Press, Knoxvill
Vintage Books (A Division of Random House)
2004    ISBN 1-4000-3398-5
            “What being a naturalist has come to mean to me, sitting my mornings and evenings by the river, hearing the clack of herons through the creak of swallows over the screams of osprey under the purl of fox sparrows, so far removed from White and Darwin and Leopold and even Carson, is this: Pay attention to the mystery. Apprentice to the best apprentices. Rediscover in nature your own biology. Write and speak with appreciation for all you have been gifted. Recognize that a politics with no biology, or a politics with no field biology, or a political platform in which human biological requirements form but one plank, is a vision of the gates of Hell.
            These words form the final paragraph of “The Naturalist” an essay originally published in Orion magazine. The words sum up, to the extent that summation is possible, the writings of Barry Holstun Lopez. They finalize one of the many works reprinted in Vintage Lopez, a sort of literary retrospective including chapters and excerpts from several previous books. In turn, many of the books are collections of works previously published in periodicals. “The Naturalist” is the only one of these works not previously published in book form;
            Lamentably, Vintage Lopez does not include any material from Of Wolves and Men, the non fiction book which first brought this notable author to my attention. Of Wolves and Men popularized Barry Lopez as a writer more than any other work. It was a recounting of what he learned accompanying wolf researchers on expeditions in the field.
            Vintage Lopez does include a notable excerpt from Artic Dreams, the winner of the 1986 National Book Award and other honors. The publication of Arctic Dreams was the culmination of travels with scientists in Alaska and Northern Canada. It summarized their field studies of the native peoples of those lands. Vintage Lopez includes the introductory chapter from Arctic Dreams among its many excerpts from previous books. Vintage Lopez is the fifteenth book authored by Lopez. For those just beginning their exploration of the works of Barry Lopez, it is an excellent place to start.
-Reviewed by Ray Zimmerman

Previously Published in The Hellbender Press, Knoxville

Billy Watson’s Croker Sack
Franklin Burroughs
ISBN 0-8203-1999-6
University of Georgia Press
 
“It is always dangerous to question a college professor. They are paid to talk by the hour.” So begins the explanation that Franklin Burroughs gives of the term “croker sack” in his book Billy Watson’s Croker Sack. The explanation is really a postscript originally written for an editor unfamiliar with the term. As used in Burroughs’ writing, the croker sack is a large cloth bag containing the results of a day's foraging the bounty of low country wetlands.
Despite this warning of long windedness, Franklin Burroughs is an accomplished essayist. His writing is equally eloquent whether he is describing his homeland in coastal South Carolina or his adopted home in Maine. The two disparate lands are not so much compared and contrasted as joined in the striking narratives contained in this book.
The contents of a croker sack are surprising and unpredictable, but the contents of this book are surprisingly delightful. In his work, Burroughs includes descriptions of fishermen, duck hunters, one moose hunter, and an aging bird dog to which he pays his final respects. These stories are an engaging tapestry woven together on a loom, which is the land itself.
When Mr. Burroughs spoke at the Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga earlier this year, he delighted the audience with his humor and with the love of the subject matter that shines through his writing. This love of the land is clearly illustrated by a short piece about his recuperation from a childhood illness. Unable to accompany his father on the duck hunting trips, he looks forward to his daddy’s return when he will see the results of the days hunt, and he reads voraciously. Among the books is Audubon’s Birds of America.
About the picture of a wood duck in this book, Burroughs says, “Once in Sunday school we were asked what we would have presented to the infant Jesus in the stable, if we had gone there. The right answer turned out to be a pure heart or something along those lines, but I knew in my heart that it would be a pair of wood ducks, bright and friendly as the ones Audubon had painted.” 

Initially Published in May 2017, this review has been revised to conform to the version published in my newsletter, RayzReviewz, on May 9, 2022.
Rayz Reviewz
Welcome to Volume 3, Number 10

In this issue, I present my review of the anthology Missing Mountains from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. The book is not recent, but the conflict described therein continues. 

I was honored to be present at the Tennessee Aquarium's release of young sturgeon at Coolidge Park on Earth Day, April 22, 2022. I covered the event for The Hellbender Press.

The Lake Sturgeon were absent from the Tennessee river for decades before the reintroduction program began 20 years ago. The program moves forward as the first batch reaches reproductive age.

Here is a link to my story in the Hellbender Press.
https://hellbenderpress.org/news/sturgeon-release

These sturgeon were later released at Coolidge Park. My review of Missing Mountains follows the image.

Missing Mountains: We went to the Mountaintop, and it Wasn’t There
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
Wind Publications
ISBN 1893239497
            “This is a collection of writing that remembers the children who do not have good water to drink or bathe in, the people who travel unsafe roads or live beneath sites that have already sent boulders crashing through their homes. This book calls to account a government that prefers to produce coal for our energy-consuming nation in the quickest, cheapest way rather than to find a safe, more efficient, and respectful method, one which would also create jobs for the region. These are writers who support private landowners, independent truckers, and working people, writers who are hopeful of finding a better, less wasteful, and more respectful way of creating a progressive and viable community.”  - Silas House.
 
Silas House wrote these words after participating in the April 2005 Authors Tour of mountaintop removal sites, organized by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.  They conclude his Introduction to the book Missing Mountains.  House was one of thirty-five Kentucky authors who toured mining communities in eastern Kentucky to investigate and report on mountaintop removal mining. The tops of mountains are blasted away to allow access to the coal beneath them.  The resulting book is a remarkable collection of prose and poetry. The commitment of these writers gives me hope. 
 
Within the pages of Missing Mountains, the reader learns of the history and culture of the Appalachian highlands and the destruction of the landscape, the communities, the people, and the region’s economy.  The impacts of mountaintop removal are multigenerational, and the writers traveling and working together should represent a wide range of ages.
 
The age diversity of this group is best represented by seventy-five-year-old Charles Bracelen Flood and his daughter, twenty-five-year-old Lucy Flood.  They were, respectively, the oldest and youngest writers on the team.  The stories they tell also illustrate the tragedy of mountaintop removal and the political manipulations of its proponents.
 
Charles Flood’s article, “Blasted Away,” includes this quotation from Mr. Bill Caylor of the Kentucky Coal Association:  “These are the same people who would be outraged if they knew where their ground beef came from.”   Flood states that this is a response to the writers’ invasion of the “coal company’s fiefdom,” but it is, in fact, much more than that.  It is a typical example of how spokespeople of mining and industry attempt to marginalize their opponents by painting them as not connected to reality.
 
Flood quickly responded that he is part-owner of a farm where beef cattle are raised for market.  He sums up his argument, “I know the difference between traditional agricultural practices and the one-time-and-move-right-on permanent destruction of some of the most beautiful scenery in the United States.”
 
For her part, Lucy Flood tells the story of “Appalachia Extinct.”  Aside from the missing mountains and trees, one small life is missing in her story.  That life belonged to a three-year-old boy, asleep in his bed when a boulder crashed through the house and killed him.  The boulder was dislodged when a coal company illegally widened a service road above the house.  She says, “The coal company appealed the $15,000 fine for the boy’s death.”
 
These stories are set in Appalachia, and the book would not be complete without the four-part essay by Loyal Jones, illustrating the culture of the mountain people that endure this tragedy.  The initial part is titled “Appalachia Meets the Outside World.”  
 
Jones questions the stereotypes of Appalachian people and illustrates the problems imposed on them by the outside world, including both government agencies and coal companies.  After exploring “Mountain Humor” and “Mountain Music,” Jones addresses the religious aspects of the struggle in “God and Mountaintop Removal.”  Jones provides the backdrop against which the stories and poems take place.
 
An equally illustrative, though more poignant picture of the mountain peoples’ struggle against the coal companies is provided by poet Gurney Norman in “The Ballad of Dan Gibson,” a true story of holding the land in the face of the strip mining companies. It ends with these stanzas:
 
“So, they took old Dan to the Hindman jail
But he got out on a sudden bail
Put up by his neighbors and all of his kin
So he could fight the strip-miners again
 
Dan’s fighting them now, with a thousand others,
Who in this war are all blood-brothers,
Bound to defend each other’s land
From the ruin of the greedy strip-mine band.”
 
Appropriately, this poem precedes Wendell Berry’s essay, “Compromise, Hell!”  Berry, known as the dean of Kentucky writers, also contributed his essay “Contempt for Small Places” and the Afterword to the book.  His final paragraph sums up the efforts of the thirty-five writers - many of whom are not cited in this review:
 
“And so, I return to my opening theme: it is not a vision of the future that we need. We need consciousness, judgment, presence of mind. If we truly know what we have, we will change what we do.”

Notes on selected contributors to Missing Mountains follow this image. These sturgeon are ready for release at Coolidge Park. ​