“Instead of going rigid, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find a balance and repose. I retreat—not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone.” ~ Annie Dillard while stalking muskrats at Tinker Creek

There are four small butterflies hovering over the withered, late summer blooms in our little garden in front. At this point in the season, they are the most cheerful things out there.

If I were Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) writer Annie Dillard, I would’ve looked up what type of butterfly they are, and I could tell you their Latin name. (She couldn’t google back then; I could if I had more of that “holy curiosity” Einstein warns us to hold on to.) If I were her, I would have investigated what these particular butterflies eat and what eats them, their mating habits, whether they carry any parasitic insects and where they lay their eggs. I also would’ve won the Pulitzer Prize.

Alas, Annie Dillard I am not.

Since this merry winged quartet is hanging around only fifteen feet or so from my front door, greeting me several times a day as I cut through the garden lugging in groceries or Sadie or both, I have grouped them in a decidedly non-scientific category, a sentimentalized species called All Things House. For the last few weeks I’ve made pets out of them, sort of, deciding their wild frenzy of fluttering is just for me, an extension of the home I love to come back to. I have an affection for the sound of my step on the wooden porch, the very feel of the pretty but cantankerous crystal doorknob, and, now, the butterflies.

Dillard says in Pilgrim, “I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves.” I have decided that my adoption of the butterflies is the ultimate in egocentrism. It’s not even based in reality—most butterflies live only a few days. And daughter Maggie scolded me this afternoon, “Oh, Mom, they’re not the same four. I counted ten out there the other day.” So I’ve stopped short of christening them. They’re still somehow mine, though, these four friends with pale, paper-thin wings.

But back to Dillard, who loses herself in woods and creek and sky and notes while she’s stalking muskrats, which requires long periods of absolute stillness, that “even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating.” I want to be self-forgetful, and not just because I want to be invigorated or observe a muskrat foraging for reeds. He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30). I want to learn not to start sentences with I.

Years after Pilgrim was published, devoured by fans and bestowed with the crown jewel of literary prizes, Dillard wrote that she wasn’t pleased over how often that word, I, crept into the book. But I (ugh) find myself (again!) wanting more Annie and fewer insect encounters. More I, please. (But that’s just me.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m crazy about this crazy book. I’ve been dropping gems into breakfast table conversation like, “Did you know there are 228 separate muscles in a caterpillar’s head?” I’m obsessed, but not as obsessed as Dillard. Pilgrim reads a little like an acid trip (I imagine). In chapters like “Intricacy” and “Fecundity,” sometimes I think the forest is screaming at her. I look outside the window and see trees and maybe a bird or two. She sees, or is at least acutely aware of, thousands of insects chomping on aphids that are chomping on millions of leaves, the louse that burrows in the bird’s feathers, the larvae of this emerging only to eat the larvae of that, the whole beauty and terror and chaos of life but mostly indifferent and inevitable death.

Through all this, Dillard philosophizes, but she doesn’t personalize. Maybe that’s why I’ve been tinkering with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek since last summer, when I heard a sermon—in the mountains, no less—in which a shining line or two from the book was cited. Amazon beckoned—I had to have this book, but once I got it, I was baffled. What was this? It went in the pile on my bedside table, making its way to the bottom as books that made more sense got stacked on top of it—and read. I made the mistake of thinking Pilgrim is a book to be taken in small doses.

It’s not. I started drinking it in earnest this summer when Pilgrim landed on a recommended reading list. I discovered it’s a little like Shakespeare, a foreign language at first, but once I’m in the groove, I’m flying, soaring, soaking in words that sing. I can’t stop. I think in Dillard-ese.

Oh, that gorgeous prose. The elegance of passages like this hurt my heart,

“The night was clear; when the fretwork of overhead foliage rustled and parted, I could see the pagan stars. Sounds fell all about me; I vibrated like still water ruffled by wind.”

That’s about as personal as the book gets. It’s funny how, in a way, Dillard leaves herself out of things. On the rare occasion that she describes making a sandwich or patting a puppy, I’m suddenly reminded that not just the book’s bugs and muskrats are physical entities. Her mind is so big, I forget about her body. And she doesn’t mention it much.

I think that’s on purpose. After all, at Tinker Creek Dillard is struggling to lose that ever-present sense of self, to “gag the commentator,” to decrease. This she describes in the “Seeing,” chapter, which comes second. This is where I fell for the book. “The secret of seeing,” she writes, “is, then, the pearl of great price.” It “may be found,” but not “sought.” It comes through waiting, something this suburban gal is not good at, and I sadly suspect a year in the woods wouldn’t still me. Besides, as Dillard explains, the discipline of waiting to see is a life-long effort. Am I up for it?

And do I really want to see? I tell myself I do. But there is the issue of the woods screaming at me. Could I bear it, to be that aware, that keen? Too much intricacy, too much fecundity!

And there’s the more serious matter: Do I really want to decrease? I pray for this, but not wholeheartedly. It’s more like one of those Help me to want to… prayers.  I say a lot of those.

Like a hungry aphid, I feel like I’m constantly taking, getting, “chomping,” Dillard would say. But He gives so freely, so lavishly. Here’s the thing: He’ll give me this gift, this goodbye to constantly saying hello to myself, if I dare to ask for it. Do I?