Megan Nisbet: Annie Dillard #2

I truly enjoy the way Annie Dillard views the world during Springtime in her chapter titled Spring. She uses such amazing imagery that I can see everything she talks about, just as if I was there looking at it with her. And, though hard to follow sometimes, I also truly enjoy her language, and how she skips around so often, cutting off thoughts by introducing a seemingly unrelated topic, then going back to the first topic, and then bringing them together somehow. Also because of her amazing use of imagery, Dillard made me think of many things in my life that resemble the experiences she writes about in this chapter. When she wrote about the birds, she made me think about the birds that live in the tree right next to our house. They built a nest for their babies, and I can't wait until they hatch and we can see them learn to fly! I have also always wondered what bird chirps, and other animal's sounds mean. The birds in the tree next to our house chirp every time I walk up to my house, and one of them (presumably the father) jumps down from the tree and stands in front of it and chirps at me, warning me not to get nearer (hey, guy--you're living at my house! haha!). So are chirps a way of marking territory, or do birds say other things besides this? I agree with Dillard that it is funny that we've come so far with technology, but we haven't been able to figure out what a bird chirp means.

A little further into the chapter, Dillard talks about some children playing with some newts at a camping ground, and this reminds me of my childhood. Though I'm pretty sure I've never seen a newt, when I was younger, I used to play with frogs and ants. There is a ditch near our house where tadpoles were often hatched, and at least once a week, I would sneak away to the ditch (it was just past my parent's defined limit of the end of our street), and try to catch tadpoles in some sort of container that my friend and I either found in the ditch, or she had taken from her parent's house. I would then, much like a child that doesn't think about consequences, take it home to show my parents, unknowingly ratting myself out for leaving our street. Occasionally, I would also catch a frog, but my parents would always walk me back to the ditch and force me to free the tadpoles or frog every time. I would also play with ants by capturing them into a container, and making a home for them, complete with dirt and grass. I never had a pet when I was younger, so I treated the ants like my children, and fed them breadcrumbs. I stopped this after a few times, when I realized that this habitat didn't work for them, as when I would return the next morning, most of the ants would be dead. I'm still not entirely sure why since I don't know much about ants, but I suppose it was from a night of not eating. I could write so much more about all of the wonderful memories Annie Dillard's writing inspires in me, but it would take hours! I love her writing, and will probably read some of her other books this summer!