Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Chapter 11 - Stalking

The point is that it (the world, love, fish, muskrats, or electrons) is all rather fleeting. What we can see or experience or ‘know’ must be stalked. We must go looking and learn to be still, or we will never see. We get, if we will set ourselves to the task, what Moses got, which was to witness the glory of God from the cleft in the rock, witnessing the fleeting ‘hind-parts’ of God (Ex 33:22-3). We may see the Promised Land from the top of Pisgah, and our longing for more, well, moments or glimpses are all you get.

I wonder if we could make room in our schedules to pay attention. Even if our attention was being paid to people, could we go listening? People are always revealing the story of their lives. Dillard talks about the spiritual quality of stalking fish. Have you ever tried to watch fish (not in an aquarium!)? Fish are pretty skittish in the wild. They would rather not be seen (stalked, captured, or eaten). They often do not look like the water-bottom. They are reflectors of light, fleeting flashes of glory. It is any wonder that Jesus calls fishermen?

Quotes:

I am prying into secrets again, and taking my chances. I might see anything happen; I might see nothing but light on water. I walk home exhilarated or becalmed, but always changed, alive. (186)

More men in all of time have died at fishing than at any other human activity except perhaps the making of war. ... You can lure them, net them, troll for them, club them, clutch them, chase them up the inlet, stun them with plant juice, catch them in a wooden wheel that runs all night – and you still might starve. They are there, they are certainly there, free, food, and wholly fleeting. You can see them if you want to; catch them if you can. (188)

If I freeze, locking my muscles, I will tire and break. Instead of going ridged, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find balance and repose. I retreat – not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. (203)

The Principle of Indeterminacy turned science inside out. Suddenly determinism goes, causality goes, and we are left with a universe composed of what Eddington calls “mind-stuff.” (206)

Winter - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Via Positiva

 Chapter Three: Winter

 This chapter is a bit of a travel log.  She speaks of Starlings and spiders and coots and the weather.  Everywhere she is respecting both life and death.  She is in awe of the work that life does.  Have you ever hesitated to disturb a spider web, knowing that the spider has worked so diligently?  Have you ever looked at your old insect collection and thought that maybe is was a cruel exercise in presumed sovereignty?

 

Desiderata:

• Starlings: “According to Edwin Way Teale, ‘Their coming was the result of one man’s fancy.  That man was Eugene Shieffelin, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer.  His curious hobby was the introduction to America of all the birds mentioned in William Shakespeare.’” (37)  (He released 100 in Central Park in NYC. Now Starlings are ubiquitous and stubbornly entrenched.)
• “Winter clear-cuts and reseeds the easy way.  Everywhere paths unclog.” (40)
• “All that summer conceals, winter reveals” (40)  (In winter, when the leaves are dropped, there is something different to see.)
• “I’m getting used to this planet and to this curious human culture which is cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel.” (43)
• “When his father was young, he used to walk out on Great South Bay, which has frozen over, and frozen the gulls to it.  Some of the gulls were already dead.  He would take a hunk of driftwood and brain the living gulls; then with a steel knife he hacked them free below the body and rammed them into a burlap sack.  The family ate herring gull all winter, close around a lighted table in a steamy room.  And out on the Bay, the ice was studded with paired, red stumps” (43)  (Something in this made me laugh, is that the cheerfully cruel in me?)
• “Things out of place are ill.” (53) (She says this when she has a cocoon of spiders in her pocket! Out of place and ill.)