Kelley Brown-"Untying the Knot" by Annie Dillard

Did you know that a snake can tie itself into a knot? Annie Dillard shares with us in her writing that, even stated by respected scientists, a snake can intentionally tie itself into a knot in order to try to make its body big enough so that a larger snake is not able to eat it. This information on snakes tying themselves into knots started after she found a snakeskin that was in a knot, yet she could not find the start or the finish of the knot. She took the snakeskin that she found and related it to the seemingly revolving way that life and nature are.
Life is a continuum, always changing, but always revolving back around to where it was before. The seasons change and overlap but they always go in the order spring, summer, fall, and winter, and it is like that each year. Annie Dillard brings up a very interesting observation; “I wonder how long it would take you to notice the regular recurrence of the seasons if you were the first man on earth. What would it be like to live in open-ended time broken only by days and nights?” She answers this by saying that you would not understand because there was not yet a concept of a year, but you would have to know that you had felt the specific temperature before, perhaps last winter, or seen flowers bud and then die, spring and fall. The way that the seasons work and life generally is, is a cycle and continuum, just as the knot in the snakeskin, always changing but coming around again with no visible start or finish.