Living like weasels

Living like Weasels
There are many mysterious and fascinating things lurking in the wild that not many of us have a chance to see. If you are going through the woods on a nice hike chances are you’ll find some interesting things. I love hiking through trails in Easton and I always stumble upon cool things like tree carvings and marshes or even ponds that I never knew existed. Annie Dillard, the author of Living Like Weasels had a similar experience when she went through the woods and stumbled upon a little critter she did not expect to see.
As Annie describes the weasel and her encounter with it she makes it sound more than just seeing a weasel in the woods, she tells the audience that she made somewhat of a connection with it. She says “Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut”. She starts to talk about how she and the weasel were in each other’s brains; most people would probably think she was on some sort of drugs or just plain crazy but I can understand where she’s coming from, the beauty of nature is really eye-opening.
It seems like that this weasel was actually life changing to Annie because towards the end of this story she talks about how we live and how the weasel lives. We live by choice the weasel lives by instinct and I love that she mentions that because I think of how us humans live in such a screwed up society where we need to meet new expectations every day and how people spend their days behind a desk just to enjoy the simple pleasures like a car and an apartment. I’ve thought how wonderful it’d be if we lived like the Native Americans, living together and looking out for each other and not having a job just hunt and craft during the day and rest and relax throughout the night. This way of life is too good to be true unfortunately, I just think we’ve molded this world into something it shouldn’t be.
In her second to last paragraph Annie says how she would have loved to grab the weasel by the hair of its chin and follow it under the rose bush it was hiding under and live as a weasel with it. She claims that going wild would be very easy to her and that’s something not everyone can say. I wonder though if Annie would be thinking the same way if she had never encountered that weasel at Hollins Pond.
Nature can be life changing, breathing in the fresh air not smog and fuel exhaust and not staring at stop lights or televisions. Seeing what this Earth is originally made of is beautiful and not a day goes by where I don’t wish that our way of life was different and easier on our planet. Honestly we (the human race) are just killing ourselves very slowly with our pollution and wars along with nuclear radiation that we’ve brought into our atmosphere. I wish more people shared my opinion of how we live and maybe one day some drastic change will occur and possibly we won’t be so screwed.