Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

“The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind’s sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy.” 

Dillard discusses the warring parts of the human brain—that which craves knowledge, stimulation, and exploration, and that which is satisfied more easily by distraction. Dillard has just experienced a monumental, life-changing event in seeing the solar eclipse, but she is taken aback by how quickly life returns to normal. In the end, Dillard acknowledges how human this reaction is and theorizes that this is one of the many brilliant, infuriating aspects of the complexity of the mind. 

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find the darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.” 

Dillard often resents the mundane experiences she has in church, but here she reminds herself that she undergoes these experiences for her own benefit, not God’s. God does not care if she sings the hymn in church or takes the communion wafer, Dillard argues; however, to reach God, these are the steps she must take. Going to church is the only path Dillard knows to God. Just like one can only see the stars outside at night, Dillard can only see God by going to mass, even if she at times finds it unbearable.

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” 

In Essay 2, Dillard compares her spiritual journey to 19th-century explorations of the Arctic. Polar explorations were known to be dangerous, but still the crew was often woefully underprepared. Twenty-first-century historians often remark upon these inadequacies, but here Dillard compares them to the carefree attitudes she encounters in church. People go to church ostensibly to seek encounters with God, yet Dillard notes that truly meeting God would be terrifying. Much of the awe has gone out of modern-day worship, but Dillard suggests this is a mistake, since the divine is not something to be casually summoned.

“I could very calmly go wild.” 

Dillard encounters a weasel near a pond and fantasizes about following it into its den and living as a weasel lives. Here, she describes how she would embrace living this wild, animalistic lifestyle. Though brief, this sentence puts two seemingly contradictory terms together: calmly and wild. In doing so, Dillard suggests that imitating the weasel’s life would not be an act of madness or abandonment, but rather one of deliberate acceptance as she embraced what is wild, instinctive, and free within her. 

“The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, and for the life that—like anywhere else—is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade.”

In Essay 4, Dillard recounts her trip to the Napo River in Ecuador. In this passage, she warns her reader that she will not be describing anything monumental, but rather offering small details that made up her experience. Dillard believes that the point of travel and exploration is not to see anything in particular but to get a feel for the way in which life is lived in any place. The small details of an area can offer more insight than any one spectacular site or event.

“I felt terrific. My shirt was wet and cool from swimming; I had had a night’s sleep, two decent walks, three meals, and a swim—everything tasted good. From time to time each one of us, separately, would look beyond our shaded roof to the sunny spot where the deer was still convulsing in the dust. Our meal completed, we walked around the deer and back to the boats.”

Dillard sees an ensnared deer, suffering and struggling, before she continues to her lunch, which she describes in sumptuous detail. Like Dillard’s traveling companions, we as readers might expect her to feel sadness or a loss of appetite after her encounter with the dying deer. Instead, Dillard details how pleasant the experience was, even with the knowledge of the suffering deer nearby. While some might read this as a heartless moment, Dillard suggests that the world is full of suffering, yet those who are not suffering still enjoy themselves. This reaction, Dillard implies, is not callous, but simply a truth of life.

“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind used to cry, and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of the earth, and living things say very little to very few. Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink oink. But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms. I call these noises silence. It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water—and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance, the show we drove from town.” 

In Essay 6, Dillard details the silence of nature. Excluding sounds of animals and other naturally occurring phenomena, Dillard explains that silence refers to our inability to have meaningful communication with nature. She suggests that humankind may once have had this ability, but that we forfeited it, just like we forfeited our opportunity to converse with God as people used to do in ancient times. Though we strive to continue to find ways to make nature speak, we are greeted only with silence.

“We can stage our own act on the planet—build our cities on its plains, dam its rivers, plant its topsoils—but our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds, for instance. We do not eat many of them; we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds. We can only witness them—whoever they are. If we were not here, they would be songbirds falling in the forest. If we were not here, material events like the passage of seasons would lack even the meager meanings we are able to muster for them. The show would play to an empty house, as do all those falling stars which fall in the daytime. That is why I take walks; to keep an eye on things.”

Despite our best efforts, Dillard writes, we cannot force nature to do what we want it to. Rather than try to control or manipulate nature, Dillard suggests that we should appreciate how little impact we have on the world. Nature exists whether we watch it or not; Dillard believes our time would be best spent witnessing and observing rather than interfering. 

“Also there were snakes down there—water moccasins, he said. He seemed tired, old even, weary with longings, solemn. Caution passes for wisdom around here, and this kid knew all the pitfalls. In fact, there are no water moccasins this far north, except out on the coast, but there are some copperheads; I let it go. ‘They won’t hurt you,’ I said. ‘I play at the creek,’ I said. ‘Lots.’ How old are you? Eight? Nine? How could you not play at the creek? Or: Why am I trying to force this child to play at the creek? What do I do there alone that he’d want to do? What do I do there at all?”

Dillard has an odd encounter with a local boy in which the two attempt to strike up a conversation but find they have little in common. In this passage, Dillard balks at the idea that the boy doesn’t play at the local creek, then catches herself, wondering why she is trying to impose her own ideas about enjoyment and how to spend one’s time on him. Dillard suggests that trying to convince other people they’re wrong is a fruitless exercise, and sometimes it’s just better to let people be.

“I used to haunt the place because I loved it; I still do.” 

Dillard references a pond near her home in Virginia that she loves to visit, noting its size, its ruggedness, and the open skies and space to observe. Dillard uses the word “haunt” to describe her frequent trips to the area, an odd, evocative choice. “Haunting” usually relates to ghosts or spirits, and the idea of a place being haunted often has negative connotations. However, Dillard’s use suggests a more positive association with the idea of being connected to a place, returning to it again and again. Dillard subtly presents the idea of a spirit connected to a particular place not because it is trapped there, but because it returns out of a sense of love and nostalgia, to watch over the living creatures that reside there.

“I lived in that circle of light, in great speed and utter silence. When the swans passed before the sun they were distant—two black threads, two live stitches. But they kept coming, smoothly, and the sky deepened to blue behind them and they took on light. They gathered dimension as they neared, and I could see their ardent, straining eyes. Then I could hear the brittle blur of their wings, the blur which faded as they circled on, and the sky brightened to yellow behind them and the swans flattened and darkened and diminished as they flew. Once I lost them behind the mountain ridge; when they emerged they were flying suddenly very high, and it was like music changing key.” 

Dillard details an experience she had watching swans fly in the sky through a pair of binoculars. The essay is titled “Lenses,” and in this passage, Dillard suggests that the lenses of the binoculars enable her to see in great detail what otherwise might have just been a passing moment. At the beginning of the essay, Dillard writes about the need to train oneself to use lenses to be able to see through them. Similarly, one must train oneself to look for the beauty in these small subtleties, and to embrace the seemingly minute details, for an experience to be transcendent rather than fleeting.

“Tragically, these people feel they have to make a choice between the Bible and modern science. They live and work in the same world as we, and know the derision they face from people whose areas of ignorance are perhaps different, who dismantled their mangers when they moved to town and threw out the baby with the straw.” 

Dillard describes various responses to Darwin’s theories about evolution, including those of Fundamentalist Christians who reject the ideas outright. Though Dillard clearly disagrees with this way of thinking, she also shows compassion toward a different point of view. Dillard believes that rejecting science wholeheartedly is mistaken, but she also believes that this group has been persecuted by those who may be just as shortsighted and ignorant in other aspects of life. Dillard suggests that many have chosen between science and God when both sides close themselves off to essential truths.

“We were all crouched in a small room against the comforting back wall, awaiting the millennium which had been gathering impetus since Adam and Eve. Up there was a universe, and down here would be a small strip of man come and gone, created, taught, redeemed, and gathered up in a bright twinkling, like a sprinkling of confetti torn from colored papers, tossed from windows, and swept from the streets by morning.

The Darwinian revolution knocked out the back wall, revealing eerie lighted landscapes as far back as we can see. Almost at once, Albert Einstein and astronomers with reflector telescopes and radio telescopes knocked out the other walls and the ceiling, leaving us sunlit, exposed, and drifting—leaving us puckers, albeit evolving puckers, on the inbound curve of space-time.”

Before Darwin’s theories about evolution, Dillard writes, mankind had a single-minded, insulated view, but Darwin and other scientists forced us to view ourselves in the context of the greater universe around us. Dillard references Adam and Eve and the millennium to suggest that religion played a role in creating this limited perspective. Dillard writes often of the beautiful and awe-inspiring aspects of God and religion, so she is not opposed to it, but here she suggests that religion and science must work hand-in-hand to widen our perspective and allow us to better understand our place in the universe.

“Holiness is a force, and like the others can be resisted. It was given, but I didn’t want to see it, God or no God. It was as if God had said, ‘I am here, but not as you have known me. This is the look of silence, and of loneliness unendurable; it too has always been mine, and now will be yours.’ I was not ready for a life of sorrow, sorrow deriving from knowledge I could just as well stop at the gate.” 

In Essay 10, Dillard describes an encounter with the divine that she ultimately chooses to reject. Though Dillard has touched on searching for the presence of God in other essays, in this encounter with what she believes to be angels, Dillard realizes that a true brush with holiness can be frightening and overwhelming. However, Dillard also realizes in this moment that she has a choice of whether to take on this new knowledge that God has offered or to turn away. Dillard ultimately refuses this experience, choosing to return to normalcy, but she continues to look back on it with wonder.

“There are angels in those fields, and, I presume, in all fields, and everywhere else. I would go to the lions for this conviction, to witness this fact. What all this means about perception, or language, or angels, or my own sanity, I have no idea.” 

Dillard closes her essay about an encounter with the divine by anticipating that some of her readers may not fully believe her. Dillard knows the ideas sound far-fetched, but she maintains that she will hold firm to her story. In doing so, she references the Biblical story of Daniel, who is cast before lions for his faith but spared by God. Dillard also knows that some will question her sanity, or that her language may not accurately portray what she is trying to say, but she knows what she saw and won’t be swayed.

“Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you’d been bad or good. He knew when you’d been bad or good! And I had been bad.” 

Dillard remembers a childhood encounter with a neighbor dressed as Santa Claus, a sight that evokes such fear in her that she runs away in dread. Dillard mistakes Santa Claus for God, noting that both can tell if one has been bad or good. As a child, Dillard has not yet learned to be good for the sake of being good, rather than to avoid being punished, and she knows that she falls on the side of being bad. What was meant to be a fun experience organized by her parents turns out to be a striking one that Dillard carries into adulthood in which she believes that God has come to punish her for her sins.

“Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain.”

Dillard equates an experience with her neighbor, Miss White, showing her the effect of sunlight on a magnifying glass with God trying to impart knowledge to mankind. Feeling pain from the hot sun, Dillard ran away in fear, and she believes that she does the same when God offers her some new wisdom that she doesn’t understand. Dillard describes God’s love as a force from which there is no refuge, which might sound like a force that could be potentially overwhelming, frightening, and even dangerous. However, Dillard understands that God offers only love, and she suggests she no longer wants to run from these encounters with the divine.

“We look at this lone light all winter, wondering if the people there are as cheered by our light as we are by theirs. We plan to visit them in the summer and introduce ourselves, but we never do.” 

Dillard describes the loneliness of winter on Puget Sound, when the beaches empty out and there are no people to be seen for miles. Every winter, Dillard sees a light coming from a house a few miles away, and she takes warmth and comfort from knowing there are others out there. Dillard expresses her intention to befriend these people who have buoyed her with their light, but she never does once summer comes. Like many good intentions, Dillard implies that it can be easy to forget or ignore the impulse to make connections or do something kind once other distractions enter our lives. 

“In the south the giant sails and the wedding cake cruisers emerged from the dazzle suddenly ordinary in proportion and humble. Nevertheless, from their masts and over their cabins hung some remembered radiance, some light-shot tatters of their recent glory. They continued across the horizon as creatures who had been touched, like the straggling and shining caravans of the wilderness generation as it quit Sinai.” 

Dillard observes ships that become distorted in shape and size by a mirage. As the light changes and the ships return to their normal state, Dillard compares them to the Biblical followers of Moses. According to the Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, where several of the Israelites heard the voice of God. Though these people eventually returned from being in God’s presence to the normal world, Dillard implies that they could not help but be impacted by this encounter. Similarly, she suggests the ships might look the same but have been forever altered by this encounter with something otherworldly. 

“It doesn’t seem to be here that we belong, here where space is curved, the earth is round, we’re all going to die, and it seems as wise to stay in bed as budge. It is strange here, not quite warm enough, or too warm, too leafy, or inedible, or windy, or dead. It is not, frankly, the sort of home for people one would have thought of—although I lack the fancy to imagine another.”

In Essay 13, Dillard suggests that Earth is a strange home to mankind, seemingly designed in many ways to inconvenience, thwart, and sometimes even destroy mankind. In her other essays, Dillard has expressed a connection to nature, but here she argues that however much nature may fascinate or compel us, mankind is not one with nature; we stand as something separate—something on the earth but not of it. Dillard hints that she wonders why God would create such a home for humans, as the Bible suggests, when so much of the planet does not seem to be designed for us.

“Whether these thoughts are true or not I find less interesting than the possibilities for beauty they may hold. We are down here in time, where beauty grows. Even if things are as bad as they could possibly be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and wing.” 

Dillard opens some big possibilities in Essay 13, suggesting that mankind is alone and adrift in the universe. Though this may seem like a pessimistic outlook, Dillard argues that even if this is the case, there is still room for hope. Rather than wallow in misery and nihilism, Dillard believes that the most fruitful thing to do is to keep living and to enjoy the life we’re given.

“You know what it is to open up a cottage. You barge in with your box of groceries and your duffelbag full of books. You drop them on a counter and rush to the far window to look out. I would say that coming into a cottage is like being born, except we do not come into the world with a box of groceries and a duffelbag full of books—unless you want to take these as metonymic symbols for culture. Opening up a summer cottage is like being born in this way: at the moment you enter, you have all the time you are ever going to have.” 

Dillard compares opening a cottage to being born, further suggesting that life is just as fleeting as a weekend summer holiday. One may spend one’s time fretting over not getting enough time, but the time will pass the same way whether one worries about it or not. Rather than spending one’s time fretting over how quickly things are passing and trying desperately to create meaningful memories, Dillard suggests that the best way to make the most of one’s time is to try to enjoy it, in the moment, and not be bogged down by thinking of what lies ahead.

“There is an old Pawnee notion that when you are in your thirties and forties you are ‘on top.’ The idea is that at this age you can view grandly, in the fullness of your strength, both the uphill struggle of youth and the downhill slide of age. I suggest that this metaphor is inaccurate. If there is such a place as ‘on top’—if there is a sensation of riding a life span’s crest—it does not last ten or twenty years. On the contrary, the crest is so small that I, for one, missed it altogether.”

In Essay 14, Dillard symbolically describes her past and present selves spending a week together in a cottage in the mountains. The essay explores themes of aging and memory, as seen in this quote, in which Dillard suggests that life feels as though it is passing too quickly. According to the Pawnee legend Dillard describes, she should have a range of years during which she does not have to struggle with the difficulty of coming of age but is not yet declining. Dillard believes, however, that if this moment existed, it passed by so quickly she did not recognize it. There are only two selves she can distinguish: the child she was, and the aging adult she has become.