"I am sitting…" by Annie Dillard

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard

I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under me, directly under the weight of my body on the grass, are other creatures, just as real, for whom also this moment, this tree, is “it.” Take just the top inch of soil, the world squirming right under my palms.  In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found “an average of 1,356 living creatures in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 springtails, 22 millipedes, 19 adult beetles, and various numbers of 12 other forms…Had an estimate also been made of the microscopic population, it might have ranged up to two billion bacteria and many millions of fungi, protozoa and algae – in a mere teaspoon of soil.  The chrysalids of butterflies linger here too, folded, rigid, and dreamless. I might as well include these creatures in this moment, as best as I can. My ignoring them won’t strip them of their reality, and admitting them, one by one, into my consciousness might heighten mine, might add their dim awareness to my human consciousness, such as it is, and set up a buzz, a vibration like the beating ripples a submerged muskrat makes on the water, from this particular moment, this tree.

Hasidism has a tradition that one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst.  Keeping the subsoil world under trees in mind, in intelligence, is the least I can do.

Earthworms in staggering processions move through the grit underfoot, gobbling downed leaves and spewing forth castings by the ton.  Moles mine intricate tunnels in networks; there are often so many of these mole tunnels here by the creek that when I walk, every step is a letdown.  A mole is almost entirely loose inside its skin, and enormously mighty.  If you can catch a mole, it will, in addition to biting you memorably, leap from your hand in a single convulsive contraction and be gone as soon as you have it.  You are never really able to see it; you only feel its surge and thrust against your palm, as if you held a beating heart in a paper bag.  What could I not do if I had the power and will of a mole! But the mole churns the earth…

Under my spine, the sycamore roots suck watery salts.  Root tips thrust and squirm between particles of soil, probing minutely; from their roving, burgeoning tissues spring infinitesimal root hairs, transparent and hollow, which affix themselves to specks of grit and sip.  These runnels run silent and deep; the whole earth trembles, rent and fissured, hurled and drained.  I wonder what happens to root systems when trees die.  Do those spread blind networks starve, starve in the midst of plenty, and desiccate, clawing at specks?...

What else is going on right this minute while groundwater creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening.  If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow.  The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight.  Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long.  On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades…Lick a finger: feel the now…

I stand.  All the blood in my body crashes to my feet and instantly heaves to my head, so I blind and blush, as a tree blasts into leaf spouting water hurled from roots.  What happens to me? I stand before the sycamore, dazed; I gaze at its giant trunk.


*Other examples of meditation scripts: walk in the woods & sitting in a field

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Annie Dillard (1945 - ) American author, poet, essayist, nature-writer; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; An American Childhood; The Writing Life; Mornings Like This: Found Poems