Weasels are real, while thoughts are not. That much is clear. After all, what are thoughts? Thoughts themselves do not actually do anything, and they really are not necessary for one to be. Maybe a weasel cannot entertain a complex thought or make a willful choice on how to occupy his time, but does that make him of any less worth than me? Perhaps he is actually better off than I because he is obliged to live by necessity. In Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels,” she seems to suggest that the way in which weasels are driven by necessity to live in the present, and not by thought or choice, is something to be revered. And, the only way for us to surpass our own restrictive minds so that we might make at least a fleeting connection to this kind of state of being is in moments of total surprise, when we do not have time to think.
In order to discover this sort of nick-of-time living, which Dillard comes to revere, she retreats to a small patch of nature which is, ironically, intimately surrounded and touched by human existence — highway signs and beer cans and motorcycle tracks. Yet, this is the sight where Dillard is able to make a very real connection with nature that is beyond society and even beyond her own humanness. The moment when she turns and finds herself staring directly into the eyes of a little weasel, she ceases to think, and, for that instant, she is just living. When she makes the conscious choice to go into nature initially, she is in control and is above nature in a way. However, nature has a certain resilience, and even as she is passively touching nature through her interactions, nature is pushing back on her. This head-butting between humanity and nature, in which human thought and choice push against the subconscious and necessity of nature, is epitomized in this text by the emergence of the weasel in this brief moment of surprise.
“I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance” (107), Dillard recalls. This element of surprise — of being “startled” — is what creates at least a momentary link between Dillard and the weasel because without the privilege of time, the ability to think and choose does not exist. In this precise moment she loses control over her own mental state of being and is elevated to a nowness beyond thought. Both she and the weasel are “stunned into stillness” (Dillard 108/109). They do not decide to stop and stare at one another for a bit, nor could either have thought this moment of connection into existence, but rather they are stunned into this intimate connection. This idea of surprise, Dillard seems to suggest, is one element that keeps nature perpetually on its toes and living in the present moment. Nature is fast-paced and bold and can surprise us and even startle itself. Nature is in a constant state of the present, ultimately stemming from a drive based purely on necessity, one in which all that matters is thriving and just being.
“The weasel,” Dillard asserts, “lives in necessity and we live in choice…” (110), which is what inherently separates us from living the kind of existence which is found in nature, an existence where we can transcend even thought and truly just be. Choice can become a sort of human preoccupation in a society that forces people to make choices about every aspect of their lives. A weasel has a certain beauty in that he will always be just what he is, never trying to decide what he is or what he wants to do, just being and “living as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (Dillard 111). In other words, perfection can be found in the freedom of not having to choose. Humans, on the other hand, are constantly dictated by the pressure of trying to decide where to go, what to do, even what exactly they want to be. A weasel never has to make any of these choices. A weasel is just a weasel, and that is it — no less, no more. He simply lives as he is supposed to live, which coincides perfectly with living as he must in order to survive.
Like a life based on surprise, a life based on necessity also keeps one living on the edge and living in the present. A weasel’s “journal is tracks in the clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone…” (Dillard 109); his life is comprised of elements of necessity, of hunting, eating, traveling, sleeping. His life is raw, real — it is not comprised of petty choices but of the need to survive. Necessity is the ultimate demand to live a real life in the present. To live and thrive, one must be aware of his most pressing need and meet it in that moment. Awareness leads to action and survival in nature; it does not lead to thought and deliberation. A weasel does not dwell on choices or on his next day’s plans because he is too busy living right now. What is tomorrow to a weasel, after all? And, if a weasel can live a deliberate and real life without regard for tomorrow, why should we not be able to also embrace the present with our whole being? “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go…” (111), Dillard suggests to the reader. Cling to that which is necessary, and though necessity may not be the same for everyone or everything, this embracing is a universal way in which we each might achieve a deeper level of true living.
One can certainly learn from the little weasel what it means to live in the present moment, living by necessity and embracing moments of surprise, but what exactly is the pivotal connection that Dillard feels she actually makes with the weasel when all of these elements converge? She says that through nature, she “might learn something of mindlessness” (110). Though the moment itself may seem trivial, simply seeing a weasel in the woods, the implications of the moment extend behind the physicality of the interaction between the author and the weasel and transcend to something more profound. Dillard claims, “I tell you I’ve been in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places…” (109). By getting into the weasel’s brain, as she says, she has more importantly been able to pull herself away from the consuming rapture that we seem to have with our own minds. After the moment occurs, she cannot necessarily remember anything specifically about the sixty seconds they shared or about what exactly broke the moment; the connection is “a blank.” However, only through this shared blank-minded moment is Dillard able to meet the weasel and all that he represents head-on. When she ceases to simply react to the moment with surprise and tries to reach back into her own mind again to regain her mental sensibilities, to reconnect with herself, “the weasel fe[els] the yank of separation” (109). This is what Dillard speculates breaks the moment. Though these types of weasel moments are indeed inherently short-lived, Dillard still embraces the intensity and reality of such experiences and invites the reader to seek these moments beyond thought in order to make a connection past our own minds.
After all of this reflecting on not thinking, I feel as if I am almost being hypocritical to be writing a paper about the beauty of not thinking, which required me to think in order to formulate these ideas. However, I did figure something out today, and it occurred to me not when I was sitting in my room, in front of my computer, my hands on the keyboard, but rather when I was lying on my back on a mat in the weight room doing a set of eight-minute abs after track practice. The notion occurred to me how maybe the beauty of running is the way in which it really forces us to live in that exact moment and think of nothing else except what we are physically doing. Think about it — or better yet, do not think about it; just go out and do it. Go to a track meet, and run the 400m dash, and believe me, for that minute of your life, you will not be thinking about anything except breathing and moving your body as fast as you can until you cross that finish line, while hoping that you do not die before you get there. That intensity, that being consumed by the moment — that is living like a weasel. And that is real.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. “Living Like Weasels.” Sisters of the Earth. Ed. Lorraine Anderson. New York: Vintage Books, 1991: 106-111.
