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Paperwork: I won’t forget that day, the book I found and then the sad headlines · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Paperwork. I won't forget that day, the book I found, and the
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  the sad headlines. This article is being
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  read by an automated voice, brought to you by Everlit. We were
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  booking on a Wednesday, September 16th. I will remember the date because
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  of what happened the day before, on september fifteenth. I had not
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  heard the news until I got home after a day of searching
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  for book I do this with my friend Chris several times a
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  year. We hit antique shops and goodwill bookshelves. He's looking for collectibles.
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  I'm s filling in gaps on my shelf. That Wednesday was a
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  good day. I found a book I kept hearing about by author
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  author Annie Dillard. Many were giving much praise to Pilgrim at Tinker
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  Creek, the book that earned her a Pulitzer in nineteen seventy five.
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  That evening curiosity sparked, I did an online search and got the
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  sudden sad report that she had died the day before, at age
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  eighty one. Her book suddenly felt precious. She was twenty nine when
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  she won the Pulitzer for General Nonfiction. She wrote about her spiritual
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  journey and search search for connection to nature while she lived near
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  Tinker Creek outside Roanoke, Virginia, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as a
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  backdrop. A perfect setting for in Life and Self and Nature. I
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  I've seen a steady stream of tributes to Annie online, sharing quotes
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  from the book or from her book, The Writing Life which I
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  already had. Tucked inside is, a slip of paper with several page
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  numbers, pushing me toward passages that need to be re-read now and
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  then. On page 68, she wrote, Write as if you were dying.
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  At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely
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  of terminal patients. That is, after all the case, what would you
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  begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you
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  say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
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  I think the message there is not so much about dying, but
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  about writing down what's really important in life and sharing it. I'm
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  looking forward to reading about Tinker Creek as she saw it. Someone
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  last week quoted this passage. It was for this tree I searched
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  through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and
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  down winter and spring for years. The one day I was walking
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  along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all, and I saw a
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  tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where The
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  morning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I
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  stood on the grass with the lights in it. Grass that was
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  holy fire, utterly focused, and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing
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  than like being for the first time, CN knocked breathless by a
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  powerful glance. The flood of fire abated but I'm still spending The
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  power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died,
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  the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been
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  my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that
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  moments? I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely
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  seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and
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  goes, mostly goes, but I live for it. For the moment when
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  the mountains open, and a new light roars and spate through the
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  crack, and the mountains slam. What a beautiful way to describe how
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  nature swallows us whole. Don't we all have such moments? I remember
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  this happening to me. On a sunny, brilliant day in the fall,
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  my eye caught a flurry no actually a blizzard of flashing small
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  yellow leaves cascading down and carpeting the still green lawn. Non stop
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  for only a few minutes, but it felt like forever. A perfect
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  mix of color and motion and moment with message. Like Annie, something
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  inside me stirred, and I, too, was ringing. I watch now every
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  fall and see flashes of that.
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  Moment, but it's never quite The same. But I think, like Annie,
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  I still live for it, and yes, here I am writing about
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  it, because it is something I should write about. As I get
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  older and closer to dying, because it is an important part of
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  me, and that makes you anyone reading this, now a part of
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  me. Lonnie Kane, retired managing
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  editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for the
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  Herald News and Joliet in the 1970s. His paperwork emails is lonicane
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  at gmail.com or mail the news Tribune 426 2nd Street, LaSalle IL61301.