The following is taken from the autobiographical book, All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life, by Loren Eiseley (1975). (He’s talking about memories when he says “pictures”):
… Amongst this odd collection of pictures I must confess that much of historical importance has passed me by. I do not travel to political rallies and it has not been my fortune to be present at the scene of great events. On the whole, as I pause to examine this lost studio in my head, the animals outnumber by far the famous people I have met. If I sense a dearth of presidents, I have still encountered, though he looked right through me, one magnificent snow leopard, and I have also danced with an African crane. The crane, which is nearly as tall as a man, has an intricate mating dance. I was once strolling in the Philadelphia zoo when I came upon one of these birds solitary in a barely retaining enclosure.
In the animal world lines of definition are not as severely drawn as in the civilized one that we inhabit. This bird, acting under the impulse of spring, made some intricate little steps in my direction and extended its wings. Now I too believe in friendliness and spring festivities. I realized that the bird saw me as a vertical creature of the proper appearance to be a potential mate. To simplify things for her unlettered offspring, nature imparts, as in this case, a recognition of the vertical. After all, what is a face to a creature with a large bill? But then, unfortunately, in order to prevent, in her wisdom, unwise mixtures such as I and this crane potentially represented, nature insists upon an extremely complicated recognition dance. If one fails the steps and gestures, nothing is going to happen.
I fitted the vertical line pattern all right and I tried to be a good sport about the rest. I extended my arms, fluttered and flapped them. After looking carefully up and down the walk to verify that we were alone, I executed what I hoped was the proper enticing shuffle and jigged about in a circle. So did my partner. We did this a couple of times with mounting enthusiasm when I happened to see a park policeman sauntering in our direction. I dropped my arms and came to a direct, meditative halt.
The bird, too, paused uncertainly. There were now two attractive vertical figures, but they really did not seem to know the approved steps. Furthermore, not having read up on African cranes, I was a bit uncertain about the sex role I was playing. Male, female? I looked at the policeman. He looked at me. Suddenly I felt it best to leave the vicinity. Three is a crowd at moments like this. I walked away with careful unconcern in the direction of the small mammal house.
But why should my dance with a crane supersede in vividness years of graduate study? One can see a certain lack of disciplined control in a mind of this sort. Either that or the artist eye of my deprived mother lingered in me so that I was too much taken with color and form. I remember the vast wastes of the Mohave but, much more than that, I recall a baby ground squirrel that I came suddenly upon sunning himself in some fresh-turned earth beside the family burrow. His mother must have been careless, for here was her little waif blissfully lying on his back and patting his stomach. He looked up at me without a trace of fear as I stood over him. There the image stays, yet close to fifty years have passed: one ground squirrel patting his paunch.
I think, you know, it is the innocence. A violent dog-eat-dog world, a murderous world, but one in which the very young are truly innocent. I am always amazed at this aspect of creation, the small Eden that does not last, but recurs with the young of every generation. I can remember when I was just as innocent as that baby ground squirrel and expected good from everyone, as a puppy might.
You might say that innocence is a form of ignorance. Then again, you might say that one can grow ignorant of innocence.
-Julie
