itself a wide range of perceptions, actions, ideas.” Such an image, Gruber(1981) showed, guided Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selec-tion and may very well help to shape creative advances in a number offields. The particular importance of any given “image of wide scope”—asGruber (1978) noted—“depends in part on the metaphoric structure pecu-liar to the given image, in part on the intensity of the emotion which hasbeen invested in it, that is, its value to the person.” Clearly, Eiseley’s imag-inary tree was such an image, one in which he placed tremendous value.It showed him how to be, in Simone Weil’s phrase, “rooted in the absenceof place” (1977, p. 356) But like every image in his work, every event in hisOdyssey, its meaning was not solely ontogenetic.Of his two childhood appointments Eiseley kept only one. The desiretofollowthecomet’sinter-galacticjourneysprang,Eiseleyseemedtosense,from the same Faustian longing that had made man a world-eater and,inevitably, a spore-bearer as well, and since he tried to disavow himselffrom these tendencies in order to become once again a mere creature withinthe world order, it seems fitting that he failed to keep his rendezvous withthe comet and answered only the tree’s summons. It was his faithfulness toits earthly ways, after all, that brought him to proclaim himself in his lastpoem a “Druid seer” and enabled him to hear and understand the trees’“plans” for him at his life’s close; for only a tree—an “oak’s strength”—could in the end “contain his furies” (1979, p. 98).But Eiseley sensed that even these two seemingly disparate sides ofhimself—and of the species—were not irreconcilable. The human project,and our longing for space, must, he believed, end as his own had done, ina turning homeward:The task is admittedly gigantic, but even Haley’s flaming star hasrounded on its track, a pinpoint of light in the uttermost void. Manlike the comet, is both bound and free. Throughout the human genera-tions the star has always turned homeward.Nor do man’s inner journeysdiffer from that far-flung elliptic(1970, pp. 155–56).Our era, Eiseley observed, had already witnessed the perfect symbol ofsuch a “turning”: the Apollo 13 mission crew’s decision to risk a hazardousre-entry into the earth’s atmosphere rather than remain marooned in lunarorbit. To Eiseley, their motivation seemed clear and revealing:A love for earth, almost forgotten in man’s roving mind, had momen-tarily reasserted its mastery, a love for the green meadows we have solong taken for granted and desecrated to our cost. Man was born andtook shape among earth’s leafy shadows. The most poignant thing theastronauts had revealed in their extremity was the nostalgic call stillfaintly ringing on the winds from the sunflower forest (1970, p. 156)