Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

42 / Annie Dillardeither direction as far as I could see. Each individual bird bobbedand knitted up and down in the flight at apparent random, forno known reason except that that’s how starlings fly, yet all remainedperfectly spaced. The flocks each tapered at either endfrom a rounded middle, like an eye. Over my head I heard asound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff.Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, right throughthe crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind.After half an hour, the last of the stragglers had vanished intothe trees. I stood with difficulty, bashed by the unexpectednessof this beauty, and my spread lungs roared. My eyes prickedfrom the effort of trying to trace a feathered dot’s passage througha weft of limbs. Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now,birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touchingnothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet?Some weather’s coming; you can taste on the sides of your tonguea quince tang in the air. This fall everyone looked to the bandson a woolly bear caterpillar, and predicted as usual the direst ofdire winters. This routine always calls to mind the Angiers’ storyabout the trappers in the far north. They approached an Indianwhose ancestors had dwelled from time immemorial in those firforests, and asked him about the severity of the coming winter.The Indian cast a canny eye over the landscape and pronounced,“Bad winter.” The others asked him how he knew. The Indianreplied unhesitatingly, “The white man makes a big wood pile.”Here the woodpile is an exercise doggedly, exhaustedly maintaineddespite what must be great temptation. The other day Isaw a store displaying a neatly stacked quarter-cord of fireplacelogs manufactured of rolled, pressed paper. On the wrapper ofeach “log” was printed in huge letters the beguiling slogan, “TheROMANCE Without The HEARTACHE.”