Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters is a collection of essays written by Annie Dillard and originally published in 1982. Dillard is an American writer whose 1974 narrative nonfiction work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Throughout the 14 essays of Teaching a Stone to Talk, Dillard touches on themes of nature, God, time, and memory. Some of the essays have received literary awards and distinctions: “Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos” received the New York Women’s Press Club award, and in 2000, “Total Eclipse” was included in the collection The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. The edition of Teaching a Stone to Talk referenced in this guide is the HarperCollins e-book revised edition, published in 2019.

Dillard’s first essay, “Total Eclipse,” describes the awe and fear she feels as she and her husband view a solar eclipse. Dillard has trouble returning to normal life afterwards, though she notes that mankind is remarkably resilient at clinging to the mundane after encounters with the extraordinary. Essay 2, “An Expedition to the Pole,” compares Dillard’s attempts to find the divine in Catholic mass with 19th-century polar expeditions. The essay switches back and forth between two narratives—one following the obstacles Dillard must overcome, like bad singing and hokey bands, and the other following the sometimes stubborn, ridiculous, and unfathomable choices made by polar explorers. Essay 3, “Living Like Weasels,” describes Dillard’s encounter with a weasel at her local pond. After briefly making eye contact with the weasel, Dillard feels as though she temporarily enters its mind, and she reflects upon the novelty of throwing off human shackles and living like an animal.

In the fourth essay, “In the Jungle,” Dillard recalls her visit to the Napo River in Ecuador and the incomparable experiences she had there that allowed her to temporarily find peace. Essay 5, “The Deer at Providencia,” continues Dillard’s time in Ecuador. Stopping to have lunch, Dillard and her other North American companions see a deer that has been caught and will later be killed. Dillard uses the experience to reflect on the nature of suffering.

In Essay 6, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Dillard begins with an anecdote about her neighbor whose life mission is to teach a stone to talk. Dillard uses this subject as a jumping-off point to describe mankind’s inability to communicate with nature, and by extension, with God. Essay 7, “On a Hill Far Away,” begins with Dillard taking a walk near her home in Virginia, where she encounters a strange, lonely little boy, whose mother Dillard met on an earlier ramble. Essay 8, “Lenses,” compares Dillard’s lifelong fascination with watching microscopic organisms through lenses with watching birds flying through binoculars.

In the ninth essay, “Life on the Rocks: The Galápagos,” Dillard muses on how ideas, like other organisms, evolve over time. Just as living organisms are impacted by the land they live on, the land is impacted by the creatures that live on it. Everything continuously evolves. Essay 10, “A Field of Silence,” describes Dillard’s encounter with the divine. While living on a farm, Dillard goes outside one morning and experiences a strange, surreal shift in the world, which she believes to have been angels. Essay 11, “God in the Doorway,” begins with Dillard’s childhood memory of seeing Santa Claus, who was actually her neighbor, Miss White. Confusing Santa with God, Dillard runs away in terror. Dillard believes that sometimes we are not ready for the things God wants to teach us.

In Essay 12, “Mirages,” Dillard watches a mirage on the water. Boats seemingly twist into odd shapes, and the water becomes a mountainous terrain, then goes back to normal. Dillard believes that what we see in mirages are just as real as other things we see and shouldn’t be discounted. In Essay 13, “Sojourner,” Dillard begins by describing mangrove trees and their ability to detach from shorelines and form their own miniature islands to survive out at sea. Dillard feels that mankind emulates this experience, cast into a harsh, unforgiving planet and managing to build civilization and culture. The final essay, “Aces and Eights,” recalls Dillard’s weekend trip to a cabin with a nine-year-old child who is suggested to be her younger self. Dillard made a pact with herself as a child that she would never grow up and change in the way that grownups always do, and Dillard tries to honor that promise by letting the child decide how to spend their time over the weekend. However, Dillard ultimately did grow up; aging is inevitable, and time passes no matter how hard we try to memorialize the past through memories.