I just finished reading Annie Dillard’s The Abundance – Narrative Essays Old and New. In an essay called “Seeing” reprinted from her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she talks about hiding a precious penny of her own for someone else to find when she was six or seven years old. She hid the coppers on the street near her house in holes in the sidewalk, in the grass or cradled in the roots of trees. She directed people to the penny with arrows and labels she drew in chalk and this delighted her.
She writes, “It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so hungry and tired 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’ve often found coins on the streets or in parking lots. I will always stoop for even pennies or anything worthwhile that is lost. What I would consider worthwhile to spot, consider and take home might be much different than what others would ever even notice. The notion of seeing – really looking at things – is one that fascinates me. I’m a finder. I have a penchant for finding things. Lost things. Misplaced objects. Arrowheads and scrapers and other highly crafted stone and bone tools made by hand by the Algonquin Anishinaabe people thousands of years ago on the shores of the Ottawa River at our cottage in Quebec. Hidey holes of animals. Animals themselves hiding high in treetops or camouflaged in the bush. I go into a kind of trance or reverie when I walk in the forest or along the river and I have spotted many amazing living and inanimate things in my life. I’m delighted by finding small treasures which others might consider useless or a waste of their time. I turn these things over in my hand and in my mind and they become priceless moments well spent.
Really seeing nature and carefully considering my surroundings is a habit I had as a child and one that I’m revelling in as a retiree. Retired is a word I’m not fond of. I’m not nearly as tired as I was when I was working full time and raising our two children. Without work, I’m rejuvenated, not tired again! It’s a second childhood and I’m loving it! I love to wander. Forests are the home of some of my best four legged, winged and rooted friends. I especially love trees. I can spend hours looking at their crowns and canopies, their roots, gnarly bark and branches, the holes made by woodpeckers and the designs and burls in their bark. There is a tree by the Mississippi River where I live that has a growth shaped like a perfect ear. I’ve written about this “listening tree”. She has changed over the eight years since I discovered her. There are much larger holes in the middle of her trunk and the ear has become shabby and worn with wind and weather. I love taking close-up photos of these changes.
