''Living Like Weasels" By Annie Dillard
"Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard tells the story of her personal encounter with a weasel and how that opened her eyes to what the wild can teach us. After recounting two tales about the stubbornness of a weasel bite, Dillard begins her personal story at Hollins Pond. While sitting on a tree, she looked down and suddenly locked eyes with a weasel. This gaze they shared was described as "a clearing blow to the gut" and as they looked at each other, the world fell away. Dillard and the weasel invaded each other's brain's for an infinite minute before the trance was broken, leaving Dillard wondering about the life of a weasel and the simplicity it entails. She begins to dwell on all of the characteristics to be learned from a wild creature, not so much physical but mental. She says, "-but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive." A whole new opportunity, a whole new lifestyle was laid out in front of Dillard, tempting her to join the wild. But then she misses her chance and is left wondering about the potential this way of life has. She concludes, "We can live any way we want", and that you must "grasp your one necessity and not let it go", just as a weasel does.
This piece gives the reader a clear look at what more the wild really does have to offer than the constrictions of society. Dillard says, "I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it." Being in a country with so much emphasis on living a certain way and achieving certain things can be horribly overwhelming, but the wild can provide an escape from that. It makes you forget about the materialism that controls most people's lives and replaces the thoughts of wanting more, more, more with a pure drive for necessity. Dillard tells us that we live in choice while the weasel lives only by the demands that keep him alive and it is this black and white simplicity that the wild can teach man. Wouldn't it be better to focus your energy purely on the things that allow you to live rather than waste away your life worrying about the things that in the end, will have meant nothing to you? Annie Dillard has discovered the answer to this question is yes, and that the wild provides the best example of how to do this.
While Annie Dillard discovers that, if given a chance, nature can teach you how to truly live, Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, actually takes the plunge to immerse herself in the lessons of the wilderness. Strayed puts Dillard's musings to the test, and faces death in the midst of self-discovery on the Pacific Crest Trail.
This piece gives the reader a clear look at what more the wild really does have to offer than the constrictions of society. Dillard says, "I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it." Being in a country with so much emphasis on living a certain way and achieving certain things can be horribly overwhelming, but the wild can provide an escape from that. It makes you forget about the materialism that controls most people's lives and replaces the thoughts of wanting more, more, more with a pure drive for necessity. Dillard tells us that we live in choice while the weasel lives only by the demands that keep him alive and it is this black and white simplicity that the wild can teach man. Wouldn't it be better to focus your energy purely on the things that allow you to live rather than waste away your life worrying about the things that in the end, will have meant nothing to you? Annie Dillard has discovered the answer to this question is yes, and that the wild provides the best example of how to do this.
While Annie Dillard discovers that, if given a chance, nature can teach you how to truly live, Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, actually takes the plunge to immerse herself in the lessons of the wilderness. Strayed puts Dillard's musings to the test, and faces death in the midst of self-discovery on the Pacific Crest Trail.