Strategic Analysis Of Blacks Leisure Group Plc Marketing Essay

Strategic Analysis Of Blacks Leisure Group Plc Marketing Essay Nowadays, many of organizations are faced with challenges of strategic development. To overcome significant problems, all organization desire to grasp new opportunities. In 21st Century, changes in strategic direction very important, we cant keep using the traditional way to operate a corporate. Strategy can help a firm how such decisions are taken and the concepts that can useful in understanding these issues. Overall, a definition of a strategy is required. However, the characteristics can provide the definition (Johnson, Scholes Whittington, 2005): Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long term which achieves advantage in a changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. This report is give information about the strategic analysis of Blacks Leisure Group PLC. This report includes the following: Background and History Porters Five Forces Value Chain SWOT analysis PEST factors This process will help Blacks Leisure Group understand the company position and impact on strategy of the environment. Background and history Blacks Leisure Group plc is a British outdoor retailer. It owns 3 different brand names Blacks, Millets and Free Spirit. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It currently has around 308 stores. The company headquarter is based on Northampton and selling specific products like camping, walking, skilling, cycling, mountain equipment and others. Group history Blacks Leisure Group was formed in 1985 and faced financial difficulties in 1986 and 2009. But in year 1986, Blacks had survived because it received money injection from stakeholders to keep in afloat the following month. Until 2006, it engaged in an expansion of its business by opening many stores but it was short lived. Blacks changed the name of its Blacks Camping stores to Blacks Outdoor in 1994. The reason Blacks changed it name because it try to capture wide range of outdoor products market. At the same time, Blacks only focus its retail outlet on city center. In year 1999, Millets Leisure Plc became the outdoor Group which was bought by Blacks Leisure Plc. Unfortunately in year 2008 and 2009, Blacks loss  £6.8 million, pre-tax loss of  £14.4 million. Blacks had loss before tax to  £5.3m (2010: £43.6m) and in loss before tax and exceptional items to  £6.6m (2010:  £14.1m). In 2009, round 90 stores were close down as a part of restructuring (appendix 1). On November 2009, Blacks reached an agreement with the creditors which needed 75% backing. This saved Blacks from liquidation. In that time, it was a summer time, camping was a popular activity for many families. For those families member who could no longer afford an expensive holiday, outdoor activities are very good for Blacks. Blacks can capitalise the market to become market leader, it estimate  £1.2 billion in UK market. However, the problem with Blacks was its outdoor activities products conveyed for family and those people prefer outdoor activities. To become a very successful company, the process of strategic analysis for Blacks Leisure Group is the examination of the external factors which effect on the activities of the company. A business environment analysis of Blacks Leisure Group Plc, the UK outdoor equipments retailer. The analysis of the industry is conducted using PEST, competitive and Porters Five Forces models.   The internal analysis of Blacks is performed in terms of their assets, core competencies, primary and supporting activities, SWOT features, market, etc. Porter Five forces and value chain analysis can help in understanding the environment and competitive advantage The following shown porters five forces are as follows: Threat of rivalry Blacks need to think how to avoid this generic force because the leisure industry is very high competitive. Entry barriers are not very hard, other competitor can easily entry to this market. Investors have high risk to leave, if the capital costs are strenuous, if not enough. The overall effect is frequent advertisement like newspapers, radio, new product introductions and frequent price battles. Prices is one of the big issues, it can influence the sale such as buy 1 get 1 free, promotion, free delivery and others. In order, to become a market leader, Blacks need become aggressive. Leisure industries are very fierce rivalry. Only the most vigilant firm garner enough support. Threat of new entrants In this industry, it very easy to enter because this leisure industrys capital cost requirements not as high as other industries like manufacture. Additionally, the patent requirement in the industry are not that high. So that Blacks has to be ready for intense competition. Blacks need think for unique and good strategy selling point to sustain their competitor. (Porter, 1985) Threat of Buyers This is because leisure industry is highly differentiated, Blacks has to think and plan how to do well to offer their service in a superior manner to their customers. However, it gives the buyers advantage, consumers can easily switch from one leisure company to another. To keep their brand awareness, Blacks Leisure Group need offering good and high quality to their consumers. Good service also very important, so consumers have no chance to complaint about their products. Threats of suppliers The company operates in an industry segment that has a lot for different substitutes for the products. Consequently, suppliers have a lot of bargaining power. The company can make to cope with threats of suppliers is by teaming up with other leisure company to be more influential in their respective market. Example, the company can fixed all the prices or without any permission, Blacks cannot increase or decrease the prices. Threats of substitutes There are a lot of substitutes in the leisure industry like Cotswold, Mountain Warehouse, Trespass and others company. Therefore, Blacks should invest in research to forecast some of this future threat. Value chain analysis of Blacks Leisure Group Infrastructure Human resource management Technology development Procurement Inbound logistics Operations Outbound logistics Marketing and sale Services Margins Margins Support activities Primary activities Inbound logistics, this include: transportation, material handling, material storage, communication, and test information system. This all inbound logistics are related to the suppliers. For those related to the consumer is outbound logistics. So that Blacks Leisure Group needs to plan and consider how it can outsource its information system which can help them to improve performance. All media are referring to marketing and sales technological. Audio and communication involved in selling the product. Blacks need consider incorporating technological system in service operations. Process and materials involved in the service offering of the company, it call operations technologies. Besides that, Blacks need to plan how to increase their sale, merging some of their business units to sustaining competitive advantage (Thompson Strickland III, 1992). SWOT Analysis Strengths Blacks have very good seller to guide customers to the right outdoor products and equipment, it shown that this as a unique selling point. Blacks also selling good range of products. Products will range in price to meet all customers needs and wants. A good brand name help Blacks developed a common language of style among young people around the UK. Weakness A lack of experience may affect the progression of the business and wrong decision. Blacks has face financial problems (appendix 1). It very important for Blacks to learn from mistake and overcome these problems. Opportunities Outdoor products are a powerful factor for those sports coming into fashion, providing opportunities for fast moving companies. The high streets obsession with sporty fashion is creating opportunities for specialist to distribute performance products through other channels especially internet. The most important thing is know their customers well, all manufacturers and retailers have the option of adapting to any new trend and look. Threat In the event of severe recession, there is a danger of a retail price war breaking out on leisure products, with too many stores competing for the same customers. Retailers face the possible threat of more vertical integration by manufacturer (e.g. Mountain warehouse, Cotswold) PEST factors Political Based on Consumer Protection Act 1987, provides for the safety and protection of consumers by enabling Regulations or orders to be make controlling consumer goods. Provides for approved safety standards to enable compliance with general safety requirements. Next, all company need provides for liability for damage caused by defective products. Finally, prohibits misleading prices indications. The above rules, Blacks Leisure groups must follow the legistration, or else it will be take action by governments. Economic Economic stability is very important for all business. It allows a firm maintain a regular pattern of trade. Sometimes, inflation rate will affected the demand of the market. If the inflation rates grew up a lot mean that the products price will go up. In other ways, consumers purchasing power will decrease, consumers will spend less. This is an example, when governments increase the VAT from 17.5% to 20% Social Sport plays important role in many people social life. So I believe leisure and sport is a big market and large demand. In the future, it will grow rapidly especially with the recent spate of news and media reports regarding heart disease and the dangers of without any exercise. Technological Advances in technology could be advantage to the company. Blacks can try to link or develop software which show all the details of the sales and keep up to date. Latest technology like internet can help Blacks reduce expenditures, in other way it can help firm increase profit. A good website will also help promote and advertise the business, it also a good opportunities to Blacks to open up a new market. Strategic analysis Environmental marketing dynamic and the need for strategic change in order to sustain competitive advantage Nowadays, the world has changed it gaol regard to who are the real competitors. There are a lot of dynamics that come into play when trying to select which companies are Blacks Leisures competitors. Blacks assume that its competitors are other Leisure groups in the country. This is an example Barnes and Nobel used up a lot of resource to expanse many chain but it was underestimated the effect of technology like internet. The company who is call Amazon accessing numerous books without spending much inventory. In 21st century, many consumers want to access service in convenient way. Like Blacks, it online transaction have caused many consumers to leave tangible. Blacks had try to take their business to the internet. Blacks should give online transactions precedence because this has become a vital part of the marketing environment today. (Baird, 1994) Industry Concept To understand a market dynamics, Blacks has necessary to look at competition through different angles. Competition may be defined in relation to industry concept or market concept. Blacks Leisure Group is under monopolistic competition. Blacks offer only a specific range of service to consumer in superior manner. Blacks need to consider issue is entry vs. exit barriers within the industry. The leisure industry has minimal entry barriers and it require low capital to entry to new market. For exit, it rather high because it likely that the assets will be obsolete by the time to leave the exit industries. These dynamics need to be incorporated by Blacks to stay ahead. Now the world has different industries with different level of globalisation. There are a lot number of companies to compete on a global platform, this mean that leisure industry is one of the most heavily hit. Blacks Leisure is not an exception, so Blacks need to break into other market segments owing to the fact that many leisure companies to do same. It would be necessary to check consumers that may be interested in their service (Aaker, 1984) Market Concept Marketers consider competition in different light. It can be define competitors as entity to meet the same consumer need. Even the service may not relate, but they may qualify as competitors. When analysing competition, we can find out which companies are using same strategic path as Blacks Leisure Group. Blacks need always look at other companies whether the competitor under consideration has wide or narrow line. Blacks can analyse the manufacturing costs of its competitor, if the competitor have the same costs, Blacks ought to watch out of it. It can be followed by an analysis of service offering. It is a force worth reckoning, if Blacks competitor offers a high quality or service products. The following step, Blacks can consideration different type of price offer. After doing an analysis of the strategies used by other company, Blacks need to look out for the objectives of their competitors. I will suggest Blacks look at their competitors strength, so it will know how large their share in the market. By examining all the latter issues, Blacks can figure out some loopholes among their competitors and establish itself in the market (Benter and Booms, 1981) Recommendation It is very important developing and sustaining competitive advantage for Blacks Leisure Group. Blacks Leisure ought to be sustaining competitive advantage because the world becomes increasingly interconnected. Globalisation has present new challenge to all leisure industries around the world and also UK. Blacks Leisure Group should make sure that sustain competitive advantage, if they fail to do so the online companies might drive them out of the market. The high technology and internet have further aggravated the situation. It is necessary for Blacks to ensure that they can expand their business or distribution their chain in a cost efficient manner such likes online companies example Amazon. If Blacks is not enough to drive a new change to improve the financial debts, the company has to improve product offering, service and quality to battle with other larger competitor. Leisure companies have a lot of brand names or products, this may give advantage over Blacks to their company strength. However, Blacks should develop and sustain an advantage or competitive advantage over its players in the leisure equipment industry. Blacks Leisure groups stakeholders should not underestimate the effects competition. If they fail to do, it will make loss profits or profits decline. Consequently, Blacks Leisure group need vigilant about to built up a good market positions and managing their brand selectively. Conclusion The Blacks Leisure Group operates in highly competitive market with their competitors. Consequently, Blacks Leisures environmental dynamics cannot be ignored. What can Blacks do is try to sustain competitive advantage include offering superior service, outsourcing their inbound and outbound logistics, integrating business unit, teaming up with leisure groups to strengthen their buyer power from suppliers. Finally, integrating technological advancements and encompassing the global market more aggressively. All this strategic steps will help Blacks Leisure Group enhancing their position in the market (Amit, 2007) Reference and bibliography Aaker, David A. (1984): Strategic Marketing Management. New York: John Wiley. Baird, L. (1994): Meeting global challenges: The executive perspective; University of Boston Barney, J.   B. (1991): Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage, Journal of Management, 1 (January) Barney, J. B. (1997): Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley. Benter, J. and Booms, B. (1981): business development strategies and organizational structures for service firms, in Donnelly, J. and George, W. Marketing, American Marketing Association, Chicago. Blackwell, David, Weather Puts the Freeze on Blacks Leisure,  Financial Times,  January 11, 2001.   Blacks Leisure Group PLC. (2011).  Blacks Leisure Group PLC.  Available: http://www.firefighters3peaks.co.uk/Fire%20Service%203%20Peaks%20discount%20form.pdf.   Dyer, R.   F. and Ernest H. F (1991): An Analytical Approach to Marketing Decisions. Fashion Puts Bounce in Blacks Leisure,  Financial Times,  May 21, 1997.   Focus: Blacks Leisure,  Guardian,  October 20, 1999.   Gloomy Day for Clothing Group,  Birmingham Post,  January 11, 2001, p. 24.   Grant, R.M. (2005): Contemporary Strategy Analysis; Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (U.K.) Johnson, G. Scholes, K. Whittington, R. (2005).  Exploring Corporate Strategy. Edinburgh Gate: Preson Education Limited. Lumsden, Quentin, Sports Chain Looks Unbeatable,  Independent on Sunday,  August 18, 1996, p. 6.   None. (2011).  Blacks Leisure Group PLC.  Available: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Blacks-Leisure-Group-plc-Company-History.html. Last accessed 8 Nov 2011. Potter, Ben, Blacks Sticks to Expansion Track,  Daily Telegraph,  October 20, 1998, p. 33. Porter, M.E. (1985): Competitive Advantage: The Free Press, New York, 1985. Professor Raphael Amit (2007): Strategic Management , a journal for Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Thompson, A. Strickland III, A. (1992): Strategy formulation and complementation: Tasks of the General Manager; Blackwell Publishers

Brave New World - Summary Essay -- essays research papers

Basic Plot: This novel takes place in the year 632 A.F. The government controls the population of Utopia, there are only test tube births and an artificial process for multiplying the embryos. Marriage is forbidden. There are ten World Controllers; these people control the government and all of their plans. In the very beginning there are students being given a guided party line tour through the London Hatcheries. Two employees that work there are Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne, they have been dating each other too much and are discouraged by the state. So Lenina’s best friend, Fanny, picks on her because of this. Lenina then meets Bernard Marx, and grows to like him so much that she agrees to go on a vacation with him to a New Mexican Savage Reservation. This is a place where people are sent to if they do not abide to the laws of the Utopian world. This is where problems begin to happen and the Director of Hatcheries, Tomakin, threatens exile to Marx if he does not mend his ways, for he has become very out spoken. While at this reservation Lenina and Bernard meet a savage, John, and his mother Linda. From talking to John and Linda, Bernard pieces together their past. He finds out that Linda traveled to the Reservation with Tomakin years ago and became pregnant; therefore Tomakin left her at the reservation never to see her again. Linda gave birth, to John, therefore breaking a law and never being permitted to enter Utopia again. Bernard and Lenina brought Linda and John back to Utopia with the permission of one of the World Controllers. When they arrive home Bernard finds out that the Directors o Hatcheries is about to exile him, then which Marx produces John and Linda that greet him as son and wife. Tomakin then resigned in disgrace. Bernard and a friend, Helmholtz Watson, help to adjust John to Utopia, and spend each day showing off Utopia to him. John becomes more disgusted and appalled with each passing day. Mean while, Lenina has become infatuated with John and made sexual advances toward him, and this ruins his image of her as an object of worship, so he spurns her. Soon his mother died and John went berserk and tried to lecture the Utopians back to sanity. A riot takes place and Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled, but John is ordered to stay behind. John is determined to escape Utopia and flees to a deserted spot outside London. But Utopia come... ... book I felt both shock and disappointment. The ending shocked me, but I have to say that it was my favorite part of the book and I really don’t care for any other parts of the book. I was disappointed that the book ended like that and so suddenly. Also I was sort of hoping and thinking that there would have been a happy ending, where both John and Lenina ended up together, or that the Utopians would of changed their ways of life. I would recommend this book to someone whom likes to read science fiction books about the future, because this book could be a possibility of how the future will be. Also a science fiction book like this would be enjoyed by people who like to read science fiction books because it is a very technical and realistic novel, written by a descriptive author. In the year of 1932 quite a lot was beginning to take place nationally and around the world. In the U.S. Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been elected the Presidential Office. The open-air theater opened with ‘Merrie England’. And over in Germany the beginning of Nazis was starting to take action, with Adolf Hitler as their leader. This is just a few events that were taking place during the year of 1932.

Neil Armstrong Essay -- essays research papers

Neil Armstrong Background Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio in the year 1930. His services as a pilot were called upon during the Korean War. Shortly after graduating from Purdue University in 1955, Armstrong joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. At the time the functions of the N.A.C. were to plan, direct, and conduct all United States aeronautical and space activities, except for those that were primarily military. Armstrong served as a civilian test pilot at Edwards Air Base in Lancaster, California. In 1962 Armstrong became the first civilian to enter the astronaut-training program. Gemini VII Mission   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In March of 1966, Armstrong completed his training and became the command pilot of the Gemini 8 mission. The crew of this mission was made up of David R. Scott and himself. In case of any emergencies with the two men before the launch, either physical or mental, a backup crew was made. The backup crew consisted of Charles Conrad Junior, and Richard Gordon Junior. The objectives of the mission were:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A. (Main) Rendezvous and dock with Gemini Agena target vehicle (GATV) and conduct EVA operations.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  B. (Secondary) Rendezvous and dock in the 4th revolution. Perform docked-vehicle maneuvers, Evaluate systems and conduct 10 experiments. The mission was set to launch on March 15, 1966. Due to mino...

Essay --

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whatever the party shall have not been thoroughly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to the jurisdiction. This is the 13th amendment. Now we may ask ourselves as a country, what does this mean for us? Well to me, this is probably the most powerful thing that I've ever heard. This is just deeper than words on a paper, this, this text right here is the reason why I am able to stand here and talk to you today. January 31, 1865, a day and what's a beautiful piece of work was created. 1856, Dreed Scott v. Sandford a case in which an enslaved African American wrote a petition to the Supreme Court asking for his freedom. Did he win? Of course not, its 1856. The Supreme Court ruled against him as well as saying that the Bill of Rights did not apply to African Americans. Let me read to you what the Constitution has to say about racism and segregation. â€Å"_____________† Oh thats right, it doesn’t. Until 1865, people who were not straight white males were not considered to be human beings. â€Å"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.† Abraham Lincoln 1858. A wise man, with wise words explaining that no man nor woman created by â€Å"THE CREATOR† should deny freedom to a person or persons because we would not want to have our freedom to be denied by others. African-Americans as well as many other nonwhite Americans did not have the rights to vote in wrongful aggression of slavery, and have many other opportunities and careers such as the whites. To be seen as American and not as interfere work to be uses labor. It is important to learn these things, because we can know a... ...something greater than we think it is. We, as a community must stop with the verbal abuse, to not only to the African Americans, but to any of us that may be different from ourselves. Stop the vulgar comments and â€Å"wisecracks† in which we think that is funny is really a dull unsharpened arrow piercing the heart of an innocent human being just like yourself. Can I ask you something? Do we make jokes about Holocaust? Do we make violent slurs about 9/11? So why should racism be treated any differently? The only way to end this, is one person at a time. Looking at themselves and making an obligation to their heart saying that no longer will I exploit the insurreties of an individual. No longer will I put myself and my selfish desires over other’s feelings and emotions. Are we ready to grow and mature as a nation as a community, as a civilization? Or, maybe its just me.

Clinical Practice Essay

Clinical practice is of outmost significance because this is the site where students can turn theory into practice, students can interact with patients and families, and face the real world of medicine. It is significant and useful to reflect upon assessment practices to evaluate students in clinical setting. For this purpose, this paper analyzes three articles relevant to the clinical practices by the nursing students, and the role they should play outside the classroom, and who should evaluate them in the clinical setting. This paper also features suggestions and recommendations derived from the reflections and analyses made on the articles reviewed. Article one. The ongoing search for best practice in clinical teaching and learning: A model of nursing students’ evolution to proficient novice registered nurses. This article by Edgecombe and Bowden (2009) features current search to implement best practices in clinical teaching and identifies those positive and negative elemen ts as well as the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that make an impact on nursing students’ learning process, and their development and growing process from students to proficient novice nurses Rns. The study was conducted at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, and involved 111 students. A model was created intending to assist students in their transformation from students to RNs, the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) model was designed as an innovative approach for clinical teaching. This approach focuses on the specific use of the clinical setting available for learning practices in health settings such as mental health centers, acute medical departments, and surgical wards or community health organizations. The DEU follows the principles of adult learning of modifying, relearning, and replacing knowledge, skills, strategies and values through experience gained, and reflections made (Edgecombe & Bowden, 2009). The DEU foundational philosophy relies on the sound relationships between clinicians and academicists, valuing their contributions aimed at establishing the optimal learning environment for nursing students. Also valuing nursing students’ views. The model described in the article might have influences on the development of future curriculums, upgrading of staff and on different approaches used to place staff in adequate positions. The model can also serve to do research works intended to the teaching and learning process in the realm of nursing educ ation (Edgecombe & Bowden, 2009). Among the elements analyzed in this article, the authors highlighted  the emphasis students placed on the importance of belonging to a place, to feeling valued and trusted. These positive feelings, greatly influence the students’ learning processes. However, when a student feels isolated, neglected from the regular clinical staff or heavily or unfairly critized or scoffed at his/her performance, these actions have a negative impact on the learning stage at this specific clinical setting (Edgecombe & Bowden, 2009). It is important to observe tha bulling, and lateral violence at the workplace exist in some hospitals and health settings, as indicated by Broome and Williams (2011), especially with novice nurses or new nurses when they begin working for the first time in a clinical setting. In this regard, Broome and Williams (2011) state that in some health care settings the problem takes place when some experierenced nurses complaining about novice nurses’ performance, and the lateral violence develops in different ways and causes serious impacts on the victims. Dellasega (2009) considers that lateral violence manifests in cover or overt verb al and non verbal aggression episodes. Reflecting upon these topics among the negative effects that a toxic environment may cause to nursing students as indicated above by Edgecombe and Bowden, (2009), the author of this paper also believe that bullying and lateral violence can also create a harmful atmosphere for the learning process among students who develop their practices in a clinical setting. Article 2. Developing a successful nursing objective structured clinical examination. This article written by McWilliam and Botwinski (2010) evaluates the basic components for developing relevant and useful nursing objectives in the clinical area for nursing students, but these authors failed to highlight some significant aspects of high-skilled therapeutic work, the importance of interpersonal aptitudes, and blending some key information into practices in clinical settings. The article deals with assessing the clinical skills that students may acquire in different health scenarios. This practice is vital because students can work and learn from different scenarios, patients and diseases (Mcwilliam & Botwinski, 2010). According to Mcwillian & Botwinski (2010), clinical educators should pass on their experience gained to students, and at the same time, should ensure that patients also gain safe nurturing consideration. In achieving these goals, the delivery of clinical instructions should be imbuied of professional ability, proper interpersonal relations, and adequatin g aspects  of temperament. Educators should have a clear idea on the model that may guide them turning a speficic scenario into a learning experience, and also into an evaluative procedure that will be mutually beneficial for the educator and the nursing students. Nurse’s decision-making abilities derived from critical thinking and evidence-based practice have been analyzed by various analysists who have reflected that choice making is a studied skill that nurse educators should teach, but there are few research intended to investigate the choices made by nursing students. If more information of this topic is available, educators will be capable of designing a more proper curriculum that also covers the developing of this attitude geared to teach students how to make better choices (Mcwillian & Botwinski, 2010). The author of this paper believes that tools to furnish the nursing students to develop critical thinking and choice making are a vital part of the curriculum. It is true that not all topics can be covered in a curriculum as stated by Mcwillian and Botwinski (2010), but decision making process and a good guidance are crucial elements of a proper and adequate nursing training in clinical practice. Article three. Evaluation in clinical practice using an innovative model for clinical teachers The article features the Reflective Interaction Analysis in Nursing Education (RIANE) Model which addresses the problems faced by clinical teachers of how to turn information-rich interactions in clinical practice into objective information using a format that provides valuable feedback and helps evaluation. The Model facilitates the translation of the interactions for clinical teachers that occurs on a daily basis with nursing students, recorded in notes for their further use in formative and summative evaluations (Zafir & Nissim, 2011). The article discusses the use of this model in the training of a group of nurses that will become clinical teachers. The RIANE model motivates clinical teachers to see the students’ clinical interactions as another way to contribute to the learning process, as an educational opportunity. It provides certain order in an amount of information difficult to manage by clinical teachers who have to find a way to make this information accessible to students (Zafir & Nissim, 2011). The author of this paper considers that allowing the students to learn from their daily experiences, enabling them to provide feedbacks, and being heard, are great positive contributions for educational purposes in the  clinical setting, and the clinical instructor can keep track of their students by recording notes while the students also render their clinical collaboration. Zafrir and Nissim (2011) believe that the proper role clinical teachers should play is that of guidance, support, inspiration, and facilitating learning. Also these authors consider that an environment of mutual trust and confidence should prevail in supporting students’ process of learning and growth. There are several models for clinical instructors and faculty to evaluate students outside the classroom: The clinical instructor can use the modality of preceptor ,one to one relation, in which an experienced nurse serves as a preceptor for a certain period of time. The clinical teaching associate (CTA) model uses a staff nurse collaborating with a faculty to train a given number of students for clinical practices. The paired model features one-student, one patient model, a variation of the preceptor model, and a student begins clinical practice within specific days supervised by a staff nurse for a practicum experience (Billings and Halsted, 2009). Other models for clinical instructors to evaluate students outside the classroom, and on occasions, jointly with the faculty during their clinical practices are the clinical teaching partnership where a form of collaboration is established, the service institution contributes with a clinical nurse specialist and the university constribut es with a faculty member. Adjunt faculty is another model in which the faculty is a health care professional hired by a service setting in the modality of part-time. This professional can serve in several roles as supervisor, mentor, guest lecturer, and preceptor, and can also render a collaboration in research works (Billings and Halsted, 2009). The role that a student should play in the evaluation process should be that of a student that prepares for the clinical experience, establishes good relationships and exhibits proper communication skills, learns and accepts feedbacks and adapts to the assigned clinical setting and advances in his/her performance. The unsuccessful student in the clinical experience is unprepared for this activity, does not establish communication efficiently, breaks legal and ethical practices, uses practices that are not safe, his/her adaptation to the assigned clinical setting is poor (Lewallen and DeBrew, 2012). The students under a clinical practice can act in the following scenarios: labs, homeless shelters, camps, agencies that render social services often involving interdisciplinary health settings. The clinical teacher-student interaction is a significant part of this practice (Billings & Halsted, 2009). The author of this paper believes that students should embrace this relation, and take a good advantage of this opportunity to learn at large all what is taught by the instructor and assimilate the experience gained while doing the clinical practice, since the student is exposed to several medical situations. Conclusion The three articles reviewed contribute to make a good analysis of the possibilities of evaluating students in clinical settings. The clinical area is significant in training novice nurses because they are in contact with the real world and can interact, not only with patient but with their families and the professional colleagues and other related staff they will be working with during their professional life. The practice in clinical settings enables students also to be more confident in themselves, because after they can apply theory into practice will feel more capable in their profession, and become more autonomous decision makers. The students will have the possi bility to raise their caring abilities, and play more realistic roles based upon their practice.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

annie dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for Richard It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out. —HERACLITUS Contents Epigraph 1 Heaven and Earth in Jest iii 3 2 Seeing 16 3 Winter 37 4 The Fixed 55 5 Untying the Knot 73 6 The Present 78 7 Spring 105 8 Intricacy 124 9 Flood 149 10 Fecundity 161 11 Stalking 184 12 Nightwatch 209 13 The Horns of the Altar 225 14 Northing 247 15 The Waters of Separation 265 Afterword 278 More Years Afterward 283 About Annie Dillard 285 About the Author Other Books By Annie Dillard Cover CopyrightAbout the Publisher Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 1 Heaven and Earth in Jest I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken. He’d stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his b ack, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I’d wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I’d been painted with roses.It was hot, so hot the mirror felt warm. I washed before the mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp. What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth. The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain. I never knew. I never 4 / Annie Dillard knew as I washed, and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I’d purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the passover.We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence†¦. â€Å"Seem like we’re just set down here,† a woman said to me recently, à ¢â‚¬Å"and don’t nobody know why. † These are morning matters, pictures you dream as the final wave heaves you up on the sand to the bright light and drying air. You remember pressure, and a curved sleep you rested against, soft, like a scallop in its shell. But the air hardens your skin; you stand; you leave the lighted shore to explore some dim headland, and soon you’re lost in the leafy interior, intent, remembering nothing.I still think of that old tomcat, mornings, when I wake. Things are tamer now; I sleep with the window shut. The cat and our rites are gone and my life is changed, but the memory remains of something powerful playing over me. I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing. If I’m lucky I might be jogged awake by a strange bird call. I dress in a hurry, imagining the yard flapping with auks, or flamingos. This morning it was a wood duck, down at the creek. It flew away. I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blu e Ridge.An anchorite’s hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle to a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and it keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It’s a good place to live; there’s a lot to think about. The creeks—Tinker and Carvin’s—are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 5 hat providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection. The mountains—Tinker and Brushy, McAfee’s Knob and Dead Man—are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will.The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home. The wood duck flew away. I caught only a glimpse of something like a bright torpedo that blasted the leaves where it flew. Back at the house I ate a bowl of oatmeal; much later in the day came the long slant of light that means good walking. If the day is fine, any walk will do; it all looks good. Water in particular looks its best, reflecting blue sky in the flat, and chopping it into graveled shallows and white chute and foam in the riffles. On a dark day, or a hazy one, everything’s washed-out and lackluster but the water.It carries its own lights. I set out for the railroad tracks, for the hill the floc ks fly over, for the woods where the white mare lives. But I go to the water. Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet. Kazantzakis says that when he was young he had a canary and a globe. When he freed the canary, it would perch on the globe and sing.All his life, wandering the earth, he felt as though he had a canary on top of his mind, singing. West of the house, Tinker Creek makes a sharp loop, so 6 / Annie Dillard that the creek is both in back of the house, south of me, and also on the other side of the road, north of me. I like to go north. There the afternoon sun hits the creek just right, deepening the reflected blue and lighting the sides of trees on the banks. Steers from the pasture across the creek come down to drink; I always f lush a rabbit or two there; I sit on a fallen trunk in the shade and watch the squirrels in the sun.There are two separated wooden fences suspended from cables that cross the creek just upstream from my tree-trunk bench. They keep the steers from escaping up or down the creek when they come to drink. Squirrels, the neighborhood children, and I use the downstream fence as a swaying bridge across the creek. But the steers are there today. I sit on the downed tree and watch the black steers slip on the creek bottom. They are all bred beef: beef heart, beef hide, beef hocks. They’re a human product like rayon. They’re like a field of shoes.They have cast-iron shanks and tongues like foam insoles. You can’t see through to their brains as you can with other animals; they have beef fat behind their eyes, beef stew. I cross the fence six feet above the water, walking my hands down the rusty cable and tightroping my feet along the narrow edge of the planks. When I hit th e other bank and terra firma, some steers are bunched in a knot between me and the barbedwire fence I want to cross. So I suddenly rush at them in an enthusiastic sprint, flailing my arms and hollering, â€Å"Lightning! Copperhead! Swedish meatballs! They flee, still in a knot, stumbling across the flat pasture. I stand with the wind on my face. When I slide under a barbed-wire fence, cross a field, and run over a sycamore trunk felled across the water, I’m on a little island shaped like a tear in the middle of Tinker Creek. On one side of the creek is a steep forested bank; the water is swift and deep on that side of the island. On the other side is the level field I walked Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 7 through next to the steers’ pasture; the water between the field and the island is shallow and sluggish.In summer’s low water, flags and bulrushes grow along a series of shallow pools cooled by the lazy current. Water striders patrol the surface film, crayfish hu mp along the silt bottom eating filth, frogs shout and glare, and shiners and small bream hide among roots from the sulky green heron’s eye. I come to this island every month of the year. I walk around it, stopping and staring, or I straddle the sycamore log over the creek, curling my legs out of the water in winter, trying to read. Today I sit on dry grass at the end of the island by the slower side of the creek. I’m drawn to this spot.I come to it as to an oracle; I return to it as a man years later will seek out the battlefield where he lost a leg or an arm. A couple of summers ago I was walking along the edge of the island to see what I could see in the water, and mainly to scare frogs. Frogs have an inelegant way of taking off from invisible positions on the bank just ahead of your feet, in dire panic, emitting a froggy â€Å"Yike! † and splashing into the water. Incredibly, this amused me, and, incredibly, it amuses me still. As I walked along the grassy e dge of the island, I got better and better at seeing frogs both in and out of the water.I learned to recognize, slowing down, the difference in texture of the light reflected from mud bank, water, grass, or frog. Frogs were flying all around me. At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog. He was exactly half in and half out of the water, looking like a schematic diagram of an amphibian, and he didn’t jump. He didn’t jump; I crept closer. At last I knelt on the island’s winter killed grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag.The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin 8 / Annie Dillard emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football. I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and ru mple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing. I gaped bewildered, appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away. The frog skin bag started to sink.I had read about the giant water bug, but never seen one. â€Å"Giant water bug† is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown bug. It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs. Its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward. It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite. That one bite is the only bite it ever takes. Through the puncture shoot the poisons that dissolve the victim’s muscles and bones and organs—all but the skin—and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body, reduced to a juice.This event is quite common in warm fresh water. The frog I saw was being sucked by a giant water bug. I had been kneeling on the island grass; when the unrecognizable flap of frog skin settled on the creek bottom, swaying, I stood up and brushed the knees of my pants. I couldn’t catch my breath. Of course, many carnivorous animals devour their prey alive. The usual method seems to be to subdue the victim by downing or grasping it so it can’t flee, then eating it whole or in a series of bloody bites. Frogs eat everything whole, stuffing prey into their mouths with their thumbs.People have seen frogs with their wide jaws so full of live dragonflies they couldn’t close them. Ants don’t even have to catch their prey: in the spring they swarm over newly hatched, featherless birds in the nest and eat them tiny bite by bite. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 9 That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But a t the same time we are also created. In the Koran, Allah asks, â€Å"The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest? † It’s a good question.What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest? Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator’s, once having called forth the universe, turning his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened? Was the sense of it there, and God absconded with it, ate it, like a wolf who disappears round the edge of the house with the Thanksgiving turkey? God is subtle,† Einstein said, â€Å"but not malicious. † Again, Einstein said that â€Å"nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning. † It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God â€Å"set bars and doors† and said, â€Å"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. † But have we come even that far?Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat? Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who? ), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a 10 / Annie Dillard traight vertical de scent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star. The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass.I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the At lantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights.One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six-or eight-footlong bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence. We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous vents are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 11 millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammer ed out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, â€Å"Come down to the water. † It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has een on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames. I have come to the grassy island late in the day. The creek is up; icy water sweeps under the sycamore log bridge. The frog skin, of course, is utterly gone. I have stared at that one spot on the creek bottom for so long, focusing past the rush of water, that when I stand, the opposite bank seems to stretch before my eyes and flow grassily upstream.When the bank settles down I cross the sycamore log and enter again the big plowed field next to the steers’ pasture. The wind is terrific out of the west; the sun comes and goes. I can see the shadow on the field before me deepen uniformly and spread like a plague. Everything seems so dull I am 12 / Annie Dillard amazed I can even distinguish objects. And suddenly the light runs across the land like a comber, and up the trees, a nd goes again in a wink: I think I’ve gone blind or died. When it comes again, the light, you hold your breath, and if it stays you forget about it until it goes again.It’s the most beautiful day of the year. At four o’clock the eastern sky is a dead stratus black flecked with low white clouds. The sun in the west illuminates the ground, the mountains, and especially the bare branches of trees, so that everywhere silver trees cut into the black sky like a photographer’s negative of a landscape. The air and the ground are dry; the mountains are going on and off like neon signs. Clouds slide east as if pulled from the horizon, like a tablecloth whipped off a table. The hemlocks by the barbed-wire fence are flinging themselves east as though their backs would break.Purple shadows are racing east; the wind makes me face east, and again I feel the dizzying, drawn sensation I felt when the creek bank reeled. At four-thirty the sky in the east is clear; how coul d that big blackness be blown? Fifteen minutes later another darkness is coming overhead from the northwest; and it’s here. Everything is drained of its light as if sucked. Only at the horizon do inky black mountains give way to distant, lighted mountains—lighted not by direct illumination but rather paled by glowing sheets of mist hung before them. Now the blackness is in the east; verything is half in shadow, half in sun, every clod, tree, mountain, and hedge. I can’t see Tinker Mountain through the line of hemlock, till it comes on like a streetlight, ping, ex nihilo. Its sandstone cliffs pink and swell. Suddenly the light goes; the cliffs recede as if pushed. The sun hits a clump of sycamores between me and the mountains; the sycamore arms light up, and I can’t see the cliffs. They’re gone. The pale network of sycamore arms, which a second ago was transparent as a screen, is suddenly Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 13 opaque, glowing with light.Now t he sycamore arms snuff out, the mountains come on, and there are the cliffs again. I walk home. By five-thirty the show has pulled out. Nothing is left but an unreal blue and a few banked clouds low in the north. Some sort of carnival magician has been here, some fasttalking worker of wonders who has the act backwards. â€Å"Something in this hand,† he says, â€Å"something in this hand, something up my sleeve, something behind my back†¦Ã¢â‚¬  and abracadabra, he snaps his fingers, and it’s all gone. Only the bland, blank-faced magician remains, in his unruffled coat, bare handed, acknowledging a smattering of baffled applause.When you look again the whole show has pulled up stakes and moved on down the road. It never stops. New shows roll in from over the mountains and the magician reappears unannounced from a fold in the curtain you never dreamed was an opening. Scarves of clouds, rabbits in plain view, disappear into the black hat forever. Presto chango. The audience, if there is an audience at all, is dizzy from head-turning, dazed. Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see. And, I might as well warn you, like the bear, all that I could see was the other side of the mountain: more of same.On a good day I might catch a glimpse of another wooded ridge rolling under the sun like water, another bivouac. I propose to keep here what Thoreau called â€Å"a meteorological journal of the mind,† telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights so dizzyingly lead. I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.He hasn’t the 14 / Annie Dillard faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he will ha ve learned instead is how to fake it: he’ll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why. So I think about the valley. It is my leisure as well as my work, a game.It is a fierce game I have joined because it is being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against an unseen adversary—the conditions of time—in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else. I stake the time I’m grateful to have, the energies I’m glad to direct. I risk getting stuck on the board, so to speak, unable to move in any direction, which happens enough, God knows; and I risk the searing, exhausting nightmares that plunder rest and fo rce me face down all night long in some muddy ditch seething with hatching insects and crustaceans.But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell. I am an explorer, then, and I am also a stalker, or the instrument of the hunt itself. Certain Indians used to carve long grooves along the wooden shafts of their arrows. They called the grooves â€Å"lightning marks,† because they resembled the curved fissure lightning slices down the trunks of trees.The function of lightning marks is this: if the arrow fails to kill the game, blood from a deep wound will channel along the lightning mark, streak down the arrow shaft, and spatter to the ground, laying a trail Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 15 dripped on broad-leaves, on stones, that the barefoot and trembling archer can follow in to whatever deep or rare wilderness it leads. I am the arrow shaft, carved along my length by unexpected lights and gashes from the very sky, and this book is the straying trail of blood. Something pummels us, something barely sheathed. Power broods and lights.We’re played on like a pipe; our breath is not our own. James Houston describes two young Eskimo girls sitting cross-legged on the ground, mouth on mouth, blowing by turns each other’s throat cords, making a low, unearthly music. When I cross again the bridge that is really the steers’ fence, the wind has thinned to the delicate air of twilight; it crumples the water’s skin. I watch the running sheets of light raised on the creek’s surface. The sight has the appeal of the purely passive, like the racing of light under clouds on a field, the beautiful dream at the moment of being dreamed.The breeze is the merest puff, but you yourself sail headlong and breathless under the gale force of the sp irit. 2 Seeing When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always â€Å"hid† the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk.Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 17 I wou ld be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight of a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way?It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get. I used to be able to see flying insects in the air. I’d look ahead and see, not the row of hemlocks across the road, but the air in front of it. My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects.But I lost interest, I guess, for I dropped the habit. Now I can see birds. Probably some people can look at the grass at their feet and discover all the crawling creatures. I would like to know grasses and sedges—and care. Then my least journey into the world would be a field trip, a series of happy recognitions. Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, â€Å"What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts! † It would be nice to think so. I cherish mental images I have of three perfectly happy people. One collects stones.Another—an Englishman, say—watches clouds. The third lives on a coast and collects drops of seawater which 18 / Annie Dillard he examines microscopically an d mounts. But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness. Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-youdon’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves.These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. For nature does reveal as well as conceal: now-you-don’t-see-it, now-you-do. For a week last September migrating red-winged blackbirds were feeding heavily down by the creek at the back of the house. One day I went out to investigate the racket; I walked up to a tree, an Osage orange, and a hundred birds flew away.They simply material ized out of the tree. I saw a tree, then a whisk of color, then a tree again. I walked closer and another hundred blackbirds took flight. Not a branch, not a twig budged: the birds were apparently weightless as well as invisible. Or, it was as if the leaves of the Osage orange had been freed from a spell in the form of red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished. When I looked again at the tree the leaves had reassembled as if nothing had happened.Finally I walked directly to the trunk of the tree and a final hundred, the real diehards, appeared, spread, and vanished. How could so many hide in the tree without my seeing them? The Osage orange, unruffled, looked just as it had looked from the house, when three hundred red-winged blackbirds cried from its crown. I looked downstream where they flew, and they were gone. Searching, I couldn’t spot one. I wandered downstream to force them to play their hand, but they’d crossed the c reek and scattered. One show to a Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 19 customer.These appearances catch at my throat; they are the free gifts, the bright coppers at the roots of trees. It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot? Specialists can find the most incredibly wellhidden things. A book I read when I was young recommended an easy way to find caterpillars to rear: you simply find some fresh caterpillar droppings, look up, and there’s your caterpillar.More recently an author advised me to set my mind at ease about those piles of cut stems on the ground in grassy fields. Field mice make them; they cut the grass down by degrees to reach the seeds at the head. It seems that when the grass is tightly packed, as in a field of ripe grain, the blade won’t topple at a single cut through the stem; instead , the cut stem simply drops vertically, held in the crush of grain. The mouse severs the bottom again and again, the stem keeps dropping an inch at a time, and finally the head is low enough for the mouse to reach the seeds.Meanwhile, the mouse is positively littering the field with its little piles of cut stems into which, presumably, the author of the book is constantly stumbling. If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open. I’m always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I’ve not seen one. I bang on hollow trees near water, but so far no flying squirrels have appeared. In flat country I watch every sunset in hopes of seeing the green ray.The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears. One more reason to ke ep my eyes open. A photography professor at the University of Florida just happened to 20 / Annie Dillard see a bird die in midflight; it jerked, died, dropped, and smashed on the ground. I squint at the wind because I read Stewart Edward White: â€Å"I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could see the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air. White was an excellent observer, and devoted an entire chapter of The Mountains to the subject of seeing deer: â€Å"As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer. † But the artificial obvious is hard to see. My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect. I once spent a full three minutes looking at a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it even though a dozen enthusiastic campers were shouting directions.Finally I asked, â€Å"What color am I looking for? † and a fellow said, â€Å"Green. † When at last I picked out the frog, I saw what painters are up against: the thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark. The lover can see, and the knowledgeable. I visited an aunt and uncle at a quarter-horse ranch in Cody, Wyoming. I couldn’t do much of anything useful, but I could, I thought, draw. So, as we all sat around the kitchen table after supper, I produced a sheet of paper and drew a horse. â€Å"That’s one lame horse,† my aunt volunteered.The rest of the family joined in: â€Å"Only place to saddle that one is his neck†; â€Å"Looks like we better shoot the poor thing, on account of those terrible growths. † Meekly, I slid the pencil and paper down the table. Everyone in that family, including my three young cousins, could draw a horse. Beautifully. When the paper came back it looked as though five shining, real quarter horses had been corralled by mistake with a papier-mache moose; the real horses seemed to gaze at the monster with a steady, puzzled air. I stay away from horses now, but I can do a Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 21 creditable goldfish.The point is that I just don’t know what the lover knows; I just can’t see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct. The herpetologist asks the native, â€Å"Are there snakes in that ravine? † â€Å"Nosir. † And the herpetologist comes home with, yessir, three bags full. Are there butterflies on that mountain? Are the bluets in bloom, are there arrowheads here, or fossil shells in the shale? Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me.A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: â€Å"This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is. † A fog that won’t burn away drifts and flows across my field of vision. When you see fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, you don’t see the fog itself, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in dark shreds.So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity. I can’t distinguish the fog from the overcast sky; I can’t be sure if the light is direct or reflected. Everywhere darkness and the presence of the unseen appalls. We estimate now that only one atom dances alone in every cubic meter of intergalactic space. I blink and squint. What planet or power yanks Halley’s Comet out of orbit? We haven’t seen that force yet; it’s a question of distance, density, and the pallor of reflected light. We rock, cradled in the swaddling band of darkness.Even the simple darkness of night whispers suggestions to the mind. Last summer, in August, I stayed at the creek too late. 22 / Annie Dillard Where Tinker Creek flows under the sycamore log bridge to the tear-shaped island, it is slow and shallow, fringed thinly in cattail marsh. At this spot an astonishing bloom of life supports vast breeding populations of insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals. On windless summer evenings I stalk along the creek bank or straddle the sycamore log in absolute stillness, watching for muskrats.The night I stayed too late I was hunched on the log staring spellbound at spreading, reflected stains of lilac on the water. A cloud in the sky suddenly lighted as if turned on by a switch; its reflection just as suddenly materialized on the water upstream, flat and floating, so that I couldn’t see the creek bottom, or life in the water under the cloud. Downstream, away from the cloud on the water, water turtles smooth as beans were gliding down with the current in a series of easy, weightless push-offs, as men bound on the moon.I didn’t know whether to trace the progress of one turtle I was sure of, risking sticking my face in one of the bridge’s spiderwebs made invisible by the gathering dark, or take a chance on seeing the carp, or scan the mud bank in hope of seeing a muskrat, or follow the last of the swallows who caught at my heart and trailed it after them like streamers as they appeared from directly below, under the log, flying upstream with their tails forked, so fast. But shadows spread, and deepened, and stayed. After thousands of years we’re still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp with our arms crossed over our chests.I stirred. A land turtle on the bank, startled, hissed the air from its lungs and withdrew into its shell. An uneasy pink here, an unfathomable blue th ere, gave great suggestion of lurking beings. Things were going on. I couldn’t see whether that sere rustle I heard was a distant rattlesnake, slit-eyed, or a nearby sparrow kicking in the dry flood debris slung at the foot of a willow. Tremendous action Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 23 roiled the water everywhere I looked, big action, inexplicable. A tremor welled up beside a gaping muskrat burrow in the bank and I caught my breath, but no muskrat appeared.The ripples continued to fan upstream with a steady, powerful thrust. Night was knitting over my face an eyeless mask, and I still sat transfixed. A distant airplane, a delta wing out of nightmare, made a gliding shadow on the creek’s bottom that looked like a stingray cruising upstream. At once a black fin slit the pink cloud on the water, shearing it in two. The two halves merged together and seemed to dissolve before my eyes. Darkness pooled in the cleft of the creek and rose, as water collects in a well. Untamed, dr eaming lights flickered over the sky. I saw hints of hulking underwater shadows, two pale splashes out of the water, and ound ripples rolling close together from a blackened center. At last I stared upstream where only the deepest violet remained of the cloud, a cloud so high its underbelly still glowed feeble color reflected from a hidden sky lighted in turn by a sun halfway to China. And out of that violet, a sudden enormous black body arced over the water. I saw only a cylindrical sleekness. Head and tail, if there was a head and tail, were both submerged in cloud. I saw only one ebony fling, a headlong dive to darkness; then the waters closed, and the lights went out. I walked home in a shivering daze, up hill and down.Later I lay open-mouthed in bed, my arms flung wide at my sides to steady the whirling darkness. At this latitude I’m spinning 836 miles an hour round the earth’s axis; I often fancy I feel my sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphin s, and the hollow rushing of wind raises hair on my neck and the side of my face. In orbit around the sun I’m moving 64,800 miles an hour. The solar system as a whole, like a merry-go-round unhinged, spins, bobs, and blinks at the speed of 43,200 miles an hour along a course set east of Hercules. Someone has 24 / Annie Dillard iped, and we are dancing a tarantella until the sweat pours. I open my eyes and I see dark, muscled forms curl out of water, with flapping gills and flattened eyes. I close my eyes and I see stars, deep stars giving way to deeper stars, deeper stars bowing to deepest stars at the crown of an infinite cone. â€Å"Still,† wrote van Gogh in a letter, â€Å"a great deal of light falls on everything. † If we are blinded by darkness, we are also blinded by light. When too much light falls on everything, a special terror results. Peter Freuchen describes the notorious kayak sickness to which Greenland Eskimos are prone. The Greenland fjords are p eculiar for the spells of completely quiet weather, when there is not enough wind to blow out a match and the water is like a sheet of glass. The kayak hunter must sit in his boat without stirring a finger so as not to scare the shy seals away†¦. The sun, low in the sky, sends a glare into his eyes, and the landscape around moves into the realm of the unreal. The reflex from the mirrorlike water hypnotizes him, he seems to be unable to move, and all of a sudden it is as if he were floating in a bottomless void, sinking, sinking, and sinking†¦.Horror-stricken, he tries to stir, to cry out, but he cannot, he is completely paralyzed, he just falls and falls. † Some hunters are especially cursed with this panic, and bring ruin and sometimes starvation to their families. Sometimes here in Virginia at sunset low clouds on the southern or northern horizon are completely invisible in the lighted sky. I only know one is there because I can see its reflection in still water. T he first time I discovered this mystery I looked from cloud to no-cloud in bewilderment, checking my bearings over and over, thinking maybe the ark of the covenant was just passing by south of Dead Man Mountain.Only much later did I read the explanation: polarized light from the sky is very much weakened by reflection, but the light Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 25 in clouds isn’t polarized. So invisible clouds pass among visible clouds, till all slide over the mountains; so a greater light extinguishes a lesser as though it didn’t exist. In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They’re out there showering down, committing hara-kiri in a flame of fatal attraction, and hissing perhaps at last into the ocean.But at dawn what looks like a blue dome clamps down over me like a lid on a pot. The stars and planets could smash and I’d never know. Only a piece of ashen moon occasionally climbs up or down the insi de of the dome, and our local star without surcease explodes on our heads. We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of this strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever.Darkness appalls and light dazzles; the scrap of visible light that doesn’t hurt my eyes hurts my brain. What I see sets me swaying. Size and distance and the sudden swelling of meanings confuse me, bowl me over. I straddle the sycamore log bridge over Tinker Creek in the summer. I look at the lighted creek bottom: snail tracks tunnel the mud in quavering curves. A crayfish jerks, but by the time I absorb what has happened, he’s gone in a billowing smokescreen of silt. I look at the water: minnows and shiners. If I’m thinking minnows, a carp will fill my brain till I scream.I look at the water’ s surface: skaters, bubbles, and leaves sliding down. Suddenly, my own face, reflected, startles me witless. Those snails have been tracking my face! Finally, with a shuddering wrench of the will, I see clouds, cirrus clouds. I’m dizzy, I fall in. This looking business is risky. Once I stood on a humped rock on nearby Purgatory Mountain, watching through binoculars the great autumn 26 / Annie Dillard hawk migration below, until I discovered that I was in danger of joining the hawks on a vertical migration of my own.I was used to binoculars, but not, apparently, to balancing on humped rocks while looking through them. I staggered. Everything advanced and receded by turns; the world was full of unexplained foreshortenings and depths. A distant huge tan object, a hawk the size of an elephant, turned out to be the browned bough of a nearby loblolly pine. I followed a sharp-shinned hawk against a featureless sky, rotating my head unawares as it flew, and when I lowered the glass a glimpse of my own looming shoulder sent me staggering. What prevents the men on Palomar from falling, voiceless and blinded, from their tiny, vaulted chairs?I reel in confusion; I don’t understand what I see. With the naked eye I can see two million light-years to the Andromeda galaxy. Often I slop some creek water in a jar and when I get home I dump it in a white china bowl. After the silt settles I return and see tracings of minute snails on the bottom, a planarian or two winding round the rim of water, roundworms shimmying frantically, and finally, when my eyes have adjusted to these dimensions, amoebae. At first the amoebae look like muscae volitantes, those curled moving spots you seem to see in your eyes when you stare at a distant wall.Then I see the amoebae as drops of water congealed, bluish, translucent, like chips of sky in the bowl. At length I choose one individual and give myself over to its idea of an evening. I see it dribble a grainy foot before it on its we t, unfathomable way. Do its unedited sense impressions include the fierce focus of my eyes? Shall I take it outside and show it Andromeda, and blow its little endoplasm? I stir the water with a finger, in case it’s running out of oxygen. Maybe I should get a tropical aquarium with motorized bubblers and lights, and keep this one for aPilgrim at Tinker Creek / 27 pet. Yes, it would tell its fissioned descendants, the universe is two feet by five, and if you listen closely you can hear the buzzing music of the spheres. Oh, it’s mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It’s one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can’t see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something.Galileo thought comets were an optical il lusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they’re not, we can look at what our scientists have been saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming, castellated cities hung upsidedown over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans always passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. I turn from the window. I’m blind as a bat, sensing only from every direction the echo of my own thin cries.I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. When Western surgeons discovered how to perform safe cataract operations, they ranged across Europe and America operating on dozens of men and women of all ages who had been blinded by cataracts since birth. Von Senden collected accounts of such cases; the histories are fascinating. Many doctors had tested their patients’ sense perceptions and ideas of spa ce both before and after the operations. The vast majority of patients, of both sexes and all ages, had, in von Senden’s opinion, no idea of space whatsoever.Form, distance, and size were so many meaningless syllables. A patient â€Å"had no idea of depth, confusing it with roundness. † Before 28 / Annie Dillard the operation a doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a sphere; the patient would tongue it or feel it with his hands, and name it correctly. After the operation the doctor would show the same objects to the patient without letting him touch them; now he had no clue whatsoever what he was seeing. One patient called lemonade â€Å"square† because it pricked on his tongue as a square shape pricked on the touch of his hands.Of another postoperative patient, the doctor writes, â€Å"I have found in her no notion of size, for example, not even within the narrow limits which she might have encompassed with the aid of touch. Thus when I asked her to sho w me how big her mother was, she did not stretch out her hands, but set her two index-fingers a few inches apart. † Other doctors reported their patients' own statements to similar effect. â€Å"The room he was in†¦he knew to be but part of the house, yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger† â€Å"Those who are blind from birth†¦have no real conception of height or distance.A house that is a mile away is thought of as nearby, but requiring the taking of a lot of steps†¦. The elevator that whizzes him up and down gives no more sense of vertical distance than does the train of horizontal. † For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: â€Å"The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born. She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness. † Again, â€Å"I asked the patient what he could see; he answered that he sa w an extensive field of light, in which everything appeared dull, confused, and in motion.He could not distinguish objects. † Another patient saw â€Å"nothing but a confusion of forms and colors. † When a newly sighted girl saw photographs and paintings, she asked, â€Å"‘Why do they put those dark marks all over them? ’ ‘Those aren’t dark marks,’ her mother explained, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 29 ‘those are shadows. That is one of the ways the eye knows that things have shape. If it were not for shadows many things would look flat. ’ ‘Well, that’s how things do look,’ Joan answered. ‘Everything looks flat with dark patches. ’† But it is the patients’ concepts of space that are most revealing.One patient, according to his doctor, â€Å"practiced his vision in a strange fashion; thus he takes off one of his boots, throws it some way off in front of him, and then attempts to gau ge the distance at which it lies; he takes a few steps towards the boot and tries to grasp it; on failing to reach it, he moves on a step or two and gropes for the boot until he finally gets hold of it. † â€Å"But even at this stage, after three weeks’ experience of seeing,† von Senden goes on, â€Å"‘space,’ as he conceives it, ends with visual space, i. e. with color-patches that happen to bound his view.He does not yet have the notion that a larger object (a chair) can mask a smaller one (a dog), or that the latter can still be present even though it is not directly seen. † In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of colorpatches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. Soon after his operation a patient â€Å"generally bumps into one of these color-patches and observes them to be substantial, since they resist him as tactual objects do.In walking about it also strikes him—or can if he pays attention—that he is continually passing in between the colors he sees, that he can go past a visual object, that a part of it then steadily disappears from view; and that in spite of this, however he twists and turns—whether entering the room from the door, for example, or returning back to it—he always has a visual space in front of him. Thus he gradually comes to realize that there is also a space behind him, which he does not see. † The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves over- 0 / Annie Dillard whelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. It oppresses them to realize that they have been visible to people all along, perhaps unattractively so, without their knowledge or consent. A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair. â€Å"The child can see, but will not make use of his sight.Only when pressed can he with difficulty be brought to look at objects in his neighborhood; but more than a foot away it is impossible to bestir him to the necessary effort. † Of a twenty-one-year-old girl, the doctor relates, â€Å"Her unfortunate father, who had hoped for so much from this operation, wrote that his daughter carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house, especially when she comes to a staircase, and that she is never happier or more at ease than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness. A fifteen-year-old boy, who was also in love with a girl at the asylum for the blind, finally blurted out, â€Å"No, really, I can’t stand it anymore; I want to be sent back to the asylum again. If things aren’t altered, I’ll tear my eye s out. † Some do learn to see, especially the young ones. But it changes their lives. One doctor comments on â€Å"the rapid and complete loss of that striking and wonderful serenity which is characteristic only of those who have never yet seen. † A blind man who learns to see is ashamed of his old habits. He dresses up, grooms himself, and tries to make a good impression.While he was blind he was indifferent to objects unless they were edible; now, â€Å"a sifting of values sets in†¦his thoughts and wishes are mightily stirred and some few of the patients are thereby led into dissimulation, envy, theft and fraud. † On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 31 the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. To one patient, a human hand, unrecognized, is â€Å"something bright and then holes. † Shown a bunch of grapes, a boy calls out, â€Å"It is dark, blue and shiny†¦. It isn’t smooth, it ha s bumps and hollows. A little girl visits a garden. â€Å"She is greatly astonished, and can scarcely be persuaded to answer, stands speechless in front of the tree, which she only names on taking hold of it, and then as ‘the tree with the lights in it. ’† Some delight in their sight and give themselves over to the visual world. Of a patient just after her bandages were removed, her doctor writes, â€Å"The first things to attract her attention were her own hands; she looked at them very closely, moved them repeatedly to and fro, bent and stretched the fingers, and seemed greatly astonished at the sight. One girl was eager to tell her blind friend that â€Å"men do not really look like trees at all,† and astounded to discover that her every visitor had an utterly different face. Finally, a twenty-two-old girl was dazzled by the world’s brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did n ot recognize any objects, but, â€Å"the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features; she repeatedly exclaimed: ‘Oh God!How beautiful! ’† I saw color-patches for weeks after I read this wonderful book. It was summer; the peaches were ripe in the valley orchards. When I woke in the morning, color-patches wrapped round my eyes, intricately, leaving not one unfilled spot. All day long I walked among shifting color-patches that parted before me like the Red Sea and closed again in silence, transfigured, wherever I looked back. Some patches swelled and loomed, while others vanished utterly, and dark marks flitted at random 32 / Annie Dillard over the whole dazzling sweep.But I couldn’t sustain the illusion of flatness. I’ve been around for too long. Form is condemned to an eternal danse macabre with meaning: I couldn’t unpeach the pe aches. Nor can I remember ever having seen without understanding; the color-patches of infancy are lost. My brain then must have been smooth as any balloon. I’m told I reached for the moon; many babies do. But the color-patches of infancy swelled as meaning filled them; they arrayed themselves in solemn ranks down distance which unrolled and stretched before me like a plain. The moon rocketed away.I live now in a world of shadows that shape and distance color, a world where space makes a kind of terrible sense. What gnosticism is this, and what physics? The fluttering patch I saw in my nursery window—silver and green and shape-shifting blue—is gone; a row of Lombardy poplars takes its place, mute, across the distant lawn. That humming oblong creature pale as light that stole along the walls of my room at night, stretching exhilaratingly around the corners, is gone, too, gone the night I ate of the bittersweet fruit, put two and two together and puckered forever my brain.Martin Buber tells this tale: â€Å"Rabbi Mendel once boasted to his teacher Rabbi Elimelekh that evenings he saw the angel who rolls away the light before the darkness, and mornings the angel who rolls away the darkness before the light. ‘Yes,’ said Rabbi Elimelekh, ‘in my youth I saw that too. Later on you don’t see these things anymore. †Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Why didn’t someone hand those newly sighted people paints and brushes from the start, when they still didn’t know what anything was? Then maybe we all could see color-patches too, the world unraveled from reason, Eden before Adam gave names.The scales would drop from my eyes; I’d see trees like men walking; I’d run down the road against all orders, hallooing and leaping. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 33 Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it. It is, as Ruskin says, â₠¬Å"not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. † My eyes alone can’t solve analogy tests using figures, the ones which show, with increasing elaborations, a big square, then a small square in a big square, then a big triangle, and expect me to find a small triangle in a big triangle.I have to say the words, describe what I’m seeing. If Tinker Mountain erupted, I’d be likely to notice. But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present. It’s not that I’m observant; it’s just that I talk too much. Otherwise, especially in a strange place, I’ll never know what’s happening. Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio. When I see this way I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some ays when a mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won’t show and the microscope’s mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall. But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter.When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer. 34 / Annie Dillard It was sunny one evening last summer at Tinker Creek; the sun was low in the sky, upstream. I was sitting on the sycamore log bridge with the sunset at my back, watching the shiners the size of minnows who were feeding over the mud dy sand in skittery schools. Again and again, one fish, then another, turned for a split second across the current and flash! the sun shot out from its silver side. I couldn’t watch for it.It was always just happening somewhere else, and it drew my vision just as it disappeared: flash, like a sudden dazzle of the thinnest blade, a sparking over a dun and olive ground at chance intervals from every direction. Then I noticed white specks, some sort of pale petals, small, floating from under my feet on the creek’s surface, very slow and steady. So I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white circles roll up, roll up, like the world’s turning, mute and perfect, and I saw the linear flashes, gleaming silver, like stars being born at random down a rolling scroll of time.Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water. I was the lip of a fou ntain the creek filled forever; I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was flesh-flake, feather, bone. When I see this way I see truly. As Thoreau says, I return to my senses. I am the man who watches the baseball game in silence in an empty stadium. I see the game purely; I’m abstracted and dazed. When it’s all over and the white-suited players lope off the green field to their shadowed dugouts, I leap to my feet; I cheer and cheer. But I can’t go out and try to see this way.I’ll fail, I’ll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes. The effort is really a Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / 35 discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover un iversally that the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness.Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. â€Å"Launch into the deep,† says Jacques Ellul, â€Å"and you shall see. † The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all.