Humans distinguish themselves from mere animals by the intricacy of our minds, and the greatness of our accomplishments. Where we have "free will", allowing us to make choices and shape our lives in infinite ways, animals live completely by instinct. Their will is pre-programmed for survival, which makes them incapable of, yet unburdened by choice. In Annie Dillard's essay, "Living Like Weasels," she makes this distinction quite clearly, and notes remorsefully that with our complex minds, comes a complexity in living. She wonders exactly what it means to be wild, and searches for the answer by studying a particular animal, the weasel. Through the anecdotes of others and through her own observations, she marvels at the enormous power of this tiny creature and its steely jaws, and the swift, merciless way in which it kills its prey. Can humans live like weasels? During an actual encounter with a weasel, the answer becomes clear.

Dillard's description of Hollins Pond is important in that it sets the stage for this particular type of encounter with the weasel. She describes it as a small haven within a suburban neighborhood, a twilight place where the lines between the civilized and the wild are obscured. She would come to this place, "not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it." Yet, she still desires to bring some of Hollins Pond, with its simplicity and purity, into her own life on the outside. It is only in a place like this, "threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs," that she could possibly obtain the insight which emerged suddenly, and unexpectedly from the bushes.

For an instant, locked in a mutual gaze with a weasel, Dillard shed her humanity and became wild. She was taken by instinct, frozen in a moment in which, "the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes." Staring through those eyes and into his mind, she saw not what the weasel was thinking, but more, what he was not. Likewise, the weasel could see into hers, because it contained the same nothingness, the same wildness. It is this nothingness that, for Dillard, is the essence of what is wild. The weasel doesn't think about its need to find food, or decide whether or not to bite completely through the neck of its prey. It doesn't think about how the best way to fight of an enemy is to go for its jugular. He simply does what a weasel does, not by thought or action, but by surrendering to his nature. Humans, by contrast, usually have the need to process time and events, and take deliberate action based on an unlimited number of choices. We do not allow ourselves to act instinctively, without deliberation. Instead, we hold back our basic desires and feelings and stuff them into a bottle of scrutiny.

Mistrusting our feelings, our basic nature, we deny ourselves those ultimate freedoms. It is this part of her own humanity that Dillard regrets. When the gazes are finally broken, and the weasel is gone, she wishes she had seized the moment and stayed in that wildness forever. She writes, "I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose as weasels, mute and uncomprehending."

Dillard suggests it is possible to recreate that moment of wildness, and to release one's desires from the bottle. Not in the same way as an animal would, by hunting prey or running in the wild, but by ignoring the human inner voice which restricts us. On what can actually be learned from the weasel, she writes, "I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive." It is her opinion that instead of denying that we have desires, we could try to learn what they are and hold onto them, "The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting." This idea was evidenced to Dillard by Ernest Thompson Seton. He told of an eagle that was shot out of the sky and was found to have a weasel skull attached by its teeth to the bird's neck. The weasel had probably been defending himself from an attack by the eagle, and clamping down on the eagle's neck with all the strength of his being, he was carried away.

Dillard sees the eagle as representing one's true needs and desires. She suggests that in order to bring a little of the weasel's wildness into our lives, humans should embrace them without thought, guilt, or fear. She writes, "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." The weasel latched onto his destiny and was whisked into the air, and even though it ended in his own death, he never let go. The weasel, in his absence of forethought, "lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity." This is the essence of the weasel's wildness which she seeks. It is the ability to abandon one's self to her own destiny, wherever it takes her.

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updated 9/99