A Walk Through Pilgrim
at Tinker Creek
My husband
and I read nightly or rather he reads to me from a book we have selected
together. Sometimes, it is a book he is wanting to read but is waiting to share
the experience with me. He is always spot on when it comes to knowing what
might please me. A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a book we had on the
bookshelf and not having anything else we started reading. My mind was taken on
a journey, I was familiar with some things I had experienced in my own
childhood and with the other experiences of the author, Annie Dillard, I had pause
to think. Since my husband and I have a great deal of education concerning
biology, both plants and animals, etc., it started out as an interesting read. But
it made me wonder am I where I should be? In my life, in the world, and the
universe. I had forgotten to look. I have just been traveling through the days.
When I was
younger, I was more introspective concerning my place in the world, but I did
not worry about the next minute, hour, or day. Instead, I would spend hours
with my belly hugging the ground watching ants go in and out of the mound, rest
on my back watching clouds move through the sky and go for long walks watching
everything I saw. I was complete.
Come to
think of it, I still do not worry. I have great faith something will happen and
it is all good though sometimes a bit rough about the edges. It is the edges
getting me down on occasion until I remind myself “This too will pass.” I still
possess a wonder about the world. From the various songs of the birds in the
morning to the baying and barking of dogs in the distance, I find myself
wanting to know what they are saying high in the treetops or low in the now
greening bushes. The dogs are of equal interest, are they alone in their home,
yard, or kennel? Is the animal waiting to be fed? Or sad because their person
had to leave them home? Then there is the silence. I like it. The peacefulness
of a deserted street early in the morning. I can hear the birds better, I can
notice the chill of the wind, and hear the beginning patter of the rain
falling.
I marveled
at Annie Dillard’s descriptions of what she saw around her. It is something, I
could not do as I lack the knowledge of the life of various animals and
insects, mostly, it is experience. I left the innocence of nature for college
and the busyness of being there. I left the river, the fields, the mountain,
and the hikes along the ridges. The elk across the river in their winter pasture,
the frost on the inside of my bedroom window and the icy, snowy trek to the
outhouse in the night. Instead, I was discovering a whole new world in which I
saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time in color when Dorothy reached
Oz. I found out I could be accepted without much attention placed on the tone
of my skin. Growing up indigenous in a small community was not without difficulties.
I survived.
Life is
survival. I am quite accepting of the heaven in my small circle of existence. I
am grateful when I wake up, after all I am still here and isn’t that the root
of it all? Being still here.
Lovely!
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