Wonders

Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic
coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean
horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where
the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water
in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon
at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the
mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave
rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the
six- or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks
disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave
would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions
in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awe-
some wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture
with violence.

We don't know what's going on here. If these tremendous
events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield
of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what
is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they
ignite? We don't know. Our life is a faint tracing on the
surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners
on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view,
look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's
going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question
into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that,
choir the proper praise.


Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek