Chapter 1 (Heaven
and Earth in Jest)
Dillard lives by Tinker Creek in Virginia’s
Blue Ridge Mountain. She vividly sets the scene of where she lives, and focuses heavily
on the wildlife as she takes a walk. Frogs are an interest of hers, and she has
enjoyed watching them ever since she was a child. She once saw a water bug suck
the life out of a frog at an island in Tinker Creek. She spends a lot of time
describing nature, and the beauty she sees within it, specifically the beauty
that is provided by the sun’s light.
Chapter 2 (Seeing)
Dillard
hides pennies as a child, and would lead people to this “surprise” with arrows.
She describes nature as a “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair” (18). She
discusses how in nature, you have to look deeper than the surface to truly view
it. She talks about how people see things, and the variation of what we see
between different people. Down on the banks of Tinker Creek she watches
muskrats and an airplane late into the cold night. She talks about a study from
people having cataract surgery and how their perception of touch and sight was
so different once they could see. “For the newly sighted, vision is pure
sensation unencumbered by meaning” (28). She talks about the way she goes about
viewing the elements of nature, and how other people may go about it. If she actually
tries to focus on viewing it, she
cannot.
Chapter 3 (Winter)
Starlings were introduced
to NYC and are now abundant nationwide, and are viewed as a nuisance that is
hard to control. She describes how their flight can be beautiful if you can get
past seeing them as a pest. The way natives have used animals to survive
throughout different times through history is also discussed. Dillard sneaks up
on a coot during a calm winter day, and she remains hidden from it so it
wouldn’t fly, but the coot didn’t care she was there. She sees wildlife and
animals everywhere she looks. She describes the differences that wild animals,
like turtles, fish, and even insects go through in the winter versus what they
do in the summer.
Chapter 4 (The
Fixed)
The
chapter is started with the description of how praying mantises are used to
manage pests in a garden. She has learned to spot mantis eggs, and is
embarrassed knowing how many she may have missed in the past. Dillard
descriptively describes the time she watched a praying mantis lay its eggs, as
well as the relationship between the male and female mantis. She recalls the
time as a child that her classroom had a Polyphemus moth that they watched
hatch from its cocoon. The moth wasn’t able to hatch properly; it was in a jar
in January, and its wings hardened to its back. She discusses how insects
struggle more than other organisms. The chapter ends with her recalling the
beauty the moon has to offer.
Chapter 5 (Untying the Knot)
Dillard goes on a
walk to see the shifting in the seasons, and the changes they are making in the
landscape She finds a broken fish tank
and a snakeskin that seems to be tied in a knot. She takes it home and as she
tries to untie it, she is unable to find where the knot begins. As she
contemplates the knot, she realizes that the skin is simply inside-out,
creating a loop as continuous as the seasons.
She explains that the seasons are often overlapping with
connected patterns of weather and greenery. At some points, they simply become
tangled as they continue in their cycle. She likens the continuous looping of
the season to the "knot" in the snakeskin, and to the continuous existence of the spirit.
Chapter 6 (Present)
While Driving home, she stops in Nowhere, Virginia to get
gas and some free coffee. She makes conversation with the young manager and
watches as his new beagle puppy frolics around the store. As she steps outside,
the dog follows, and she sits down and soon becomes enthralled with the
landscape and the texture of the puppy’s fur under her fingers. She is enveloped
in the present moment, and in the surrounding sensations. As soon as she
realizes this however, the moment passes. Dillard explains that a pure and
empty is what opens the “door” to the present, and that we can only fully
experience it in a state of innocent devotion when we lose ourselves—become
un-selfconscious.
II. The next day she is sitting under the sycamore at Tinker
Creek, she begins describing the scenery and allowing her mind to wander to
show how the path the mind takes to reach the “present”. She touches upon the trees behind her, on
trees in general, and then goes outward to all of the living things surrounding
her.
III. Dillard muses on
the healing properties of water. She imagines the creek’s water flowing towards
her from upstream, where the future lies as bright as a spirit. She feels that
the creek has healed her pain and her transgressions with its water, and she
becomes immersed in sensation again. She becomes fully immersed in the present,
realizing that it is always there, but that one cannot chase it down. The
present will only come and replenish you when you wait for it to approach on
its own terms.
Chapter 7 (Spring)
Spring has returned with its abundance. Birds are singing
and, by April, the newts have returned to the small forest pond so she lets
them nibble her fingers. The trees are blossoming and she wonders at their
growth and power—no person can manage their level of production with so little
to work with.
II. It is May and Dillard is in the Valley is trying to
forge her way through the greenery that has sprung up. She eventually gives up
and heads to the duck pond, which is over grown with algae. She reminisces
about her forays with the microscopic organisms that live there- she
occasionally collects them, sorts them out, and observes them under a
microscope—however, she admits that she doesn’t take any joy from the
experience. For her the process serves as a reminder of the life that
can exist in a single drop of water. She feels the need to acknowledge even the
smallest life-forms that spring can
bring into being.
Chapter 8 (Intricacy)
In
June, Dillard talks about the complexity of life in the world. She uses many
metaphors to compare life to nature. Dillard bought a fish for 25 cents, and
has these elodeas plants which she explains to contain intricacy. These plants,
and even the fish are so complex, that she looks at them through a microscope
and observes the different cells. Dillard loves to use metaphors to create an
image to the reader and help them connect the book to their lives such as when
she compares Henle’s loop to 15 yards of string on the floor. She creates the
metaphor of the fish’s blood cells flowing to the creek. Dillard asks herself
questions about why things are the way they are and how they came to be that
way. She is in amazement anything that living has its purpose. No matter what
the creature is, it has its purpose. Everything thing has its own beauty in its
unique way.
Chapter 9 (Flood)
Chapter
nine starts in the early summer, when the energy of summer has been disrupted
by the rain. The animals are going crazy, and Dillard feels this sense of
disruption, making her discontent. She thinks she hears gun shots, but as she
walks up the road she realizes it was garbage trucks backfiring, trying to win
over the girl’s attention. Dillard then remembers the hurricane that dumped
rain and made the creek flood. She compares the ugly, frantically escaping
creek to a blacksnake. Everything looked different that day. Dillard is so
upset over the water over the bridge and how everything is different she
becomes dizzy. She sees it as the whole world is like sand down a chute, the
world is at its end. She then begins to think about all the animals, and what
they do in these floods. Some animals are being noticed, such as the snapping
turtle. The weather is making the turtle frightened from the weather and the
kids trying to get it to snap at the broom stick. She ends the chapter by the
discovery of the light bulb that was on when the power was out, and the
mysterious mushroom. The mushroom provided a meal for the flood victims. The
mushroom is said to be a gift from the flood to provide mushrooms for ears to
come.
Chapter 10 (Fecundity)
Dillard
has a nightmare in which she watched two Luna moths mate and produce eggs that
hatched into fish and covered her bed. She then begins to think about what
really bothers her and us as humans. She concludes that it is not plants that
bother us, but the animal fecundity that we find appalling. She explains how
nature is as careless as it is bountiful. Dillard then creates the comparison
with fecundity and growth. Also she incorporates that with growth, there comes
death. All things will die at one point and it is how life works. She also
discusses the various things creatures need to survive and reproduce. She finds
the gooseneck barnacle to be the most interesting creature because it has to
beat the odds and cling to debris in the ocean to survive. She believes that we
need create a few organisms and give them what they need to ensure survival, rather
than have millions of eggs for only a few to survive. Dillard concludes this
chapter by saying that we are not here to judge nature or try and change it to
our liking, but to simply enjoy it and understand that death is a part of life
for all organisms.
Chapter 11 (Stalking)
In
the beginning of this chapter Dillard is at Tinker Creek again and is observing
the different animals. She describes to us how Eskimos stalk caribou herds and
travel from place to place trying to catch caribou, and how they sometimes ate
the greens in the stomach of the caribou. Eskimos had their own way of living,
but were amazed at the way we do things in our everyday lives. Dillard then
goes into talking about animals in the summer and how they hide to protect
themselves. She begins to tell us how she stalks muskrats and how they interact
in their environment. Dillard tells us about her encounter with a young muskrat
kit. She describes the surroundings and how the young muskrat disappears into
the brush proving her previous point about how animals hide to protect
themselves. After living by the creek, Dillard has observed nature and has come
to realize a special connection she has with nature. Dillard finds in quantum
mechanics a world that is similar to the tiny world at the creek. Dillard
spends her time stalking wildlife, to find answers to the unknown actions of
her surroundings.
Chapter 12 (Nightwatch)
In
Lucas meadow, Dillard stands in a field of grasshoppers. She came here to get
away and to explore nature. This is exactly what she came to see, real things
moving and the wind blowing. She looks around and observes the trails, rocks
and cliffs. She also describes the cottage and rabbit and gold finch that come
into view. She then remembers reading about eels slithering down streams and
across fields and wonders how she would react if she came across one. The
thoughts of her actions make her dizzy, just as the world around her spins. She
becomes aware of the constantly changing world and the rising and falling of
the real world.
Chapter 13 (The Horns of the Altar)
While walking at the quarry one day Dillard sees a
copperhead basking in the sun. She is intrigued and decide to “wait out” the
snake. As she continues to study the snake from head to tail, a mosquito
alights on the serpent and begins to feed, but the snake doesn’t move. She leaves when the mosquito does, and when she
gets home, she consults a book on insects to learn if mosquitoes actually feed on
snakes. The book confirms that what she saw was possible, and she begins musing
on how each living creature is food for another—how nothing is perfect. To her,
it seems natural. She realizes that everything becomes corrupted overtime, scarred and blemished in the struggle to survive, but
beauty shines despite the imperfections.
Chapter 14 (Northing)
In September the birds are quiet, they molt and grow more
restless as the October migration approaches. The chipmunks and squirrels are
hiding away food for the winter, the birds are trilling and flying about
through the trees and bushes, and the bugs and the mushrooms swarm the swarm
forest willy-nilly. The wildlife, and even the trees, seem to take on impulsive
behaviors and Dillard is excited to the same—feeling that she could just keep
walking onwards and northwards with no destination. She cannot go North, a
place she feels strips everything to its basest component, but is content to
watch as the tendrils of the North seep slowly into the land bringing on the
effects of Winter.
II. Days later,
the monarchs hatch. As more and more come into the world, Dillard realizes that
she is witnessing a mass migration. There are hundreds and their wing beats
seem tired, each flutter appears full of effort, but to her they appear to have
an endless determination. She rescues one in a parking lot, still crawling
towards the south, and is amazed to find that the butterfly is exuding a smell
similar to Honeysuckle. After five days of monarchs splitting the air and
leaving their wings in the valley for Dillard, the skies are finally vacant.
III. It seems that winter has come and the frost has come with it. Dillard feels almost religiously exultant in
its arrival. She has a dream that she was in her childhood
home, its basement covered with snow. Under a snowy rug were drawings she had
made when she was six, and near the basement was an Eskimo prayer tunnel. The
snow and the cold, seem to create a barer and holier world. The winter wind has
left the trees naked of fruit and leaf, and to Dillard, the world is more real
than ever.
Chapter 15 The
Waters of Separation
This chapter started the day of the winter
solstice. She is on her way to the quarry to try and see if her echo can kill a
bee, like the ancient Romans believed. It doesn’t work. She continues on with
her walk visiting various places along the creek, like the island where she
watched the frog get sucked down to its skin and sink. She sees a “maple key”
(samara) that floated down from above, reminding her of a Martian spaceship. It
makes her think of how one must look at the big picture of the universe. It is important to take
everything in, and take advantage of every opportunity. She says, “The
universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest” (275).
