ABSTRACT
Though she doesn’t learn what a weasel thinks, she does learn something of what she thinks. “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live … And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will” (1988, 2). Dillard’s sudden understanding of the need to grasp “our one true necessity” and not let go is occasioned by her experience, her recognition and sympathy with the wild animal she locks eyes with, and her willingness to reflect and be altered by what she has learned outside herself and within. Conscious of the particulars of her situation-middle-aged, white, female, naturalist-she uses them to find the larger connections that link her to the weasel and to her readers, who might learn something too from the energy, direction and tenaciousness she has witnessed.
