Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Dillard describes her time spent living on a farm on an island off the Washington coast. Dillard loves her time there, finding solace in tending the animals and belonging to something that feels “eternal in the crude way the earth does—extending, that is, a very long time” (137). One morning, Dillard leaves the house in the hopes of seeing the owners of the place she is renting, under the premise of going outside to listen to the rooster. The rooster makes his loud morning ruckus, joined by other roosters on other farms nearby. As Dillard looks out over the pastures, she suddenly feels a strange silence overcome the world; the pastures seem to become surrealistic versions of themselves, “monstrous, impeccable, as if they were holding their breaths” (139). Animals, plants, and people alike seem to stop as if “stuck,” “stricken and self-conscious” (139). Flies continue buzzing nearby, but Dillard herself feels “tall and vertical, in a blue shirt, self-conscious, and wishing to die” (140), as she and the rooster stare at one another, frozen.

Dillard hears whistling coming from another farm up the road and sees a woman pushing her wheelbarrow, though even sight this doesn’t break the trance: “Something had unhinged the world.