Allegory
A. Loren Eiseley begins his essay sitting in his office, having gratefulness for water.
1. He believes water is magical and contains life.
2. He explains his amazement of the water beetle and the green algae that grows in rain puddles on the rooftop.
3. He describes the possibility to experience the escape of being confined in skin.
4. The opportunity to be submerged and be one with the water.
5. Many years ago, he experiences this opportunity in a remote western country on the Platte River.
B. Loren Eiseley experiences an absorption by the water that many have never experienced.
1. He feels the watershed and the brooks of snow-line glaciers at the tips of his outstretched fingers.
2. The Platte River heads down from the Rockies into the high plains towards Missouri.
3. The river can be a mile-wide roaring river, but normally is a calm river that flows over the remnants of an Ice Age streambed.
4. He decides he wants to float down the river despite his near-drowning experience when he was child that scarred him and his lack of being able to swim.
C. Loren Eiseley lies back in a floating position and floats down the river.
1. He describes his sensation of sliding down the face of the continent.
2. He feels the coldness of the alpine springs on his fingertips and the heat of the Gulf pulling him south.
3. He expresses his feeling of touching a crayfish’s antennae and many other fish swimming under him.
4. Loren Eiseley says he is water and one with the lives of the water
5. He hits a sandbar like any log would and rose.
D. He expresses being a microcosm of streams and driftwood.
1. He feels as if he is three-fourths water.
2. Henry David Thoreau is idolized for having the insight of the Walden Pond being “animalized water”.
E. Years later Loren Eiseley returns to the Platte River.
1. It is winter and the land was ice-locked.
2. The streams were frozen and covered in snow.
3. At the edge of a frozen backwater, a prairie wind took away the
1. He believes water is magical and contains life.
2. He explains his amazement of the water beetle and the green algae that grows in rain puddles on the rooftop.
3. He describes the possibility to experience the escape of being confined in skin.
4. The opportunity to be submerged and be one with the water.
5. Many years ago, he experiences this opportunity in a remote western country on the Platte River.
B. Loren Eiseley experiences an absorption by the water that many have never experienced.
1. He feels the watershed and the brooks of snow-line glaciers at the tips of his outstretched fingers.
2. The Platte River heads down from the Rockies into the high plains towards Missouri.
3. The river can be a mile-wide roaring river, but normally is a calm river that flows over the remnants of an Ice Age streambed.
4. He decides he wants to float down the river despite his near-drowning experience when he was child that scarred him and his lack of being able to swim.
C. Loren Eiseley lies back in a floating position and floats down the river.
1. He describes his sensation of sliding down the face of the continent.
2. He feels the coldness of the alpine springs on his fingertips and the heat of the Gulf pulling him south.
3. He expresses his feeling of touching a crayfish’s antennae and many other fish swimming under him.
4. Loren Eiseley says he is water and one with the lives of the water
5. He hits a sandbar like any log would and rose.
D. He expresses being a microcosm of streams and driftwood.
1. He feels as if he is three-fourths water.
2. Henry David Thoreau is idolized for having the insight of the Walden Pond being “animalized water”.
E. Years later Loren Eiseley returns to the Platte River.
1. It is winter and the land was ice-locked.
2. The streams were frozen and covered in snow.
3. At the edge of a frozen backwater, a prairie wind took away the