Wake
“We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.” – Annie Dillard
I spent my final spring in America residing at my parents’ home in the Georgian woods. There, I divided my days between exploring both the forest and the metaphysical writings of Annie Dillard. One informed the other. The daily excursions allowed me to experience Dillard’s meditations on nature alongside her and, simultaneously, the forest was opened up and transformed into the hallowed place her writing describes. A place where the veils over mortality and fecundity are pulled back, where power and beauty are witnessed as “grace tangled with rapture and violence.”
So it was that, when I encountered the remains of a young deer, I was compelled to keep wake over it. I observed as the nightly feeding of coyotes sculpted the fawn’s form into startling compositions. Saw as the handiwork of creatures too small for sight peeled back outer layers to expose inner intricacies. Witnessed rain and soil collaborate to fold the last remnants under the earth. Nature wove one small death into itself. I gleaned what I could.
‘Wake’ is revisitation, recreation, and preservation of my experience that spring. Both a remembrance of the fawn and a small glimpse of what makes our home special among the rocks hurtling through the void. Ours is a planet continually sown in souls, with all the terror and beauty that entails.