Awesome and Awful: An Abundance of Nature

As Annie Dillard moves from scene to scene in her textual slideshow of nature, she tends to frame each with a sense of horror or wonder. The process of praying mantis reproduction is a source of horror, and yet the construction of the egg case itself is one of wonder. Nature for her is both awesome and awful. I am taking into consideration the current connotations of these words as well as their original meaning; now we might say 'inspiring' and 'terrifying' respectively, but both derive from 'awe', meaning 'a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder' (Oxford American Dictionaries). The abundance and extravagance which Dillard encounters in nature inspires this awe in her — sometimes manifest more as fear, sometimes more as wonder. She says that 'it is the fixed that horrifies us', but there is so much growth and movement and change in nature which is just as horrifying. Even within the same occurrence, such as the flock of starlings, the horrifying as well as the beautiful elements can be found. She expresses a feeling of being overwhelmed by the abundance of nature—from huge flocks of starlings to the honeysuckle overtaking a path through the woods.

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In 'The Present', Dillard turns to the ground beneath her and minutely examines all the life contained within even the smallest section of dirt. The numbers are baffling:

In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found 'an average of 1,356 living creatures present in each square foot... Had an estimate also been made of the microscopic population, it might have raged up to two billion bacteria and many millions of fungi, protozoa, and algae—in a mere teaspoon full of soil'.

We are equally fascinated by the cicada larvae underground for years ('thirteen years!—[it] is amply boggling for me.') as we are repulsed by the thought of almost an entire life below-ground ('What would I think about for thirteen years? They curl, claw, clutch at roots and suck, suck blinded, suck trees, rain or shine, heat or frost, year after groping year').

In 'Spring', the abundance of nature is even more overwhelming. She speaks on a large scale of the paths in the woods becoming overgrown and the pond being slowly overwhelmed by vegetation. On a microscopic scale, she examines the pond water. At the pond, she says it is the plankton blooms that interest her and as she tells us all about the plankton, her fascination and wonder are clear ('they whirl, paddle, swim, slog, whip, and sinuate'). But when she takes home a cupful of pond water and examines the tiny creatures under the microscope, she says, 'I don't really look forward to these microscopic forays' because sometimes when looking at a tiny creature, a larger one will come through 'writhing in huge, flapping convulsions that seemed to sweep my face and fill the kitchen'.

But Dillard follows up both of these minute examinations with a more philosophical perspective. Looking at nature superficially may give us a sense of beauty and wonder, but digging in and seeing as so many environmental writer have advocated will reveal that there is a shocking and disgusting side to nature as well. We need both of these views to be able to fully respect and appreciate nature. In Dillard's words:

I do it as a moral exercise; the microscope at my forehead is a kind of phylactery, a constant reminder of the gacts of creation that I would just as soon forget... These are real creatures with real organs leading real lives, one by one. I can't pretend they're not there. If I have life, sense, energy, will, so does a rotifer. (124)

My ignoring them wont' 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... (96)

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There is a sense of praising nature for its abundance, but it can also suffocate. She mentions Gerard Manley Hopkins in relation to the song of birds, and I think some of his poetry appropriately accompanies the positive emotions associated with nature.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as brindled cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnuts-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickly, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Not only do his subjects and his language choices reflect nature's abundance, but the intricacy of his phrasings and the overlapping sounds (alliteration) also reflect the complex layering of nature. Of course, Hopkins is throwing around religious references and certainly his focus on beauty can be attributed to his belief in the goodness of God, but Dillard expresses a similar wonder and amazement at nature's extravagance.

But even as we praise nature, we fear it. There are plenty of bugs (as Dillard loves to show us) that are disgusting and horrifying, but for the most part we need not fear them. We do fear the wild animals capable of destroying us and anyone alone in the woods at night will undoubtedly at some point feel a twinge of fear at the sounds in the dark. We may not be immediately frightened by nature's inexorable power of growth, but we must have a healthy respect for it. We know from the tumbled buildings in the city and in the far corners of our suburban neighborhoods that left alone, everything built by man will be reclaimed by nature in time. We are aware of the strength of ivy to bring a house to crumbs and the force of roots to crack cement. The growth of plants, then, is worrisome. We don't usually think of these things, and they are often not very noticeable as they take time, but looking turning to film, we can capture growth and speed it up. That plants are living things with their own inexorable force becomes apparent. We don't think of seedlings as being alive in the way humans are, but watching these fern leaves unfurl — or these wheatgrass seeds wiggle and sprout — we get an uncanny sense of their movement. It happens all the time and we don't even notice. There is a sense of wonder in watching the leaves unfurl, as Dillard discovers in her walks, but these videos give the other side of the coin; the wild, uncontrollable side. And here is a final video that gives us many growing things in nature, some wonderful, some strange: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maN9MjfRadM