I am nearly bereft. I've been re-reading Annie Dillard's 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'. I have just one chapter left and I am already grieving.
This morning I read, "Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the frozen duck pond where I stood. I heard a heart-stopping blast of speed before I saw them; I felt the flayed air slap at my face." I was instantly transported back to Sunday morning when I was again lying in bed reading Dillard.
Since a recent unexpected hospital stay I have been consciously carving out time each morning for silence, and reading, and coffee; for feeding my spirit before I face my day. My husband has very graciously accommodated me by delivering me my first cup of coffee before I get out of bed. He probably has no idea the deep impact this small gesture has upon my day. Sunday morning I was there later than usual, with the window open. Our headboard is a window looking out over our front yard. The birds were singing, the breeze was fragrant and I was reading the chapter entitled Stalking.
In it she writes about a summer she spent stalking muskrats and an astounding instance where she had been standing in a bush motionless and staring at a group of bluegills at the bottom of a deep sunlit pool along Tinker Creek. As she stared, lost to herself and her surroundings she had this encounter,
"All at once I couldn't see. And then I could: a young muskrat had appeared on top of the water, floating on its back. Its forelegs were folded langorously across its chest; the sun shown on its upturned belly. Its youthfulness and rodent grin, coupled with its ridiculous method of locomotion, which consisted of a lazy wag of the tail assisted by an occasional dabble of a webbed hind foot, made it an enchanting picture of decadence, dissipation, and summer sloth. I forgot all about the fish."
I read on as she described methods of stalking and waiting, and seeing and being seen; of physicists becoming mystics, of causality and the Principal of Indeterminancy, the lines blurring between the Natural and the Supernatural. She wrote of Moses begging God to show him his glory. And of God telling him to hide in the cleft of a rock while his glory passed by and he should perhaps look upon his backside as he passed. I was remembering my Bible reading of this encounter and how Moses' face shown so afterwards that he had to cover it while he addressed the Israelites lest they be afraid.
I was transfixed, transported. Suddenly, inches from my face, through the screen at my head the air exploded! Two of our Muscovy flew past my own window and frightened the living daylights out of me. I was exhilarated. Heart pounding, delighted I began my day, new born.
This morning, as I remember, yes I grieve the finishing of this amazing read. I think I may postpone the reading of this final chapter til Sunday morning as an offering of thanks and gratitude.
Time to stop reflecting now and do the work of the living. Wash the eggs, feed the fowl, release the captive flock from their evening imprisonment and get myself dressed for the office. Perhaps I'll be rewarded by the muscovy taking a loop around the farm? I've seen and delighted in this often, but never quite so up close and personal.
