When Annie Dillard is looking for some present tense, she wants to be present in the moment, to experience all that the created world has to offer. She wants to be able to see, hear, taste, smell, and thrill at all her mind can sense and her spirit can take in. Whether it is prowling for praying mantis egg cases in January cold, stalking the coy coot or mysterious muskrats in silence along the creek bank, or being startled into awe at an explosion of starlings in flight from a cedar lit by the afternoon amber sun, for her, these still moments—“a free gift from the universe” (16)—are to be experienced in quiet, waiting, and longing.
