Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

The overarching idea connecting all the essays is Dillard’s encounters with and attempts to understand nature. Nature can be beautiful, soothing, and transcendent, but it can also be dangerous and terrifying. The concept of the sublime was made popular in the 18th century by political thinker and philosopher Edmund Burke, who suggested that nature was innately sublime, able to generate strong sensations—including fear—in those who beheld it. Dillard subtly explores this idea in many of her essays, describing nature as something to be admired and revered but also feared. In Essay 1, for instance, Dillard describes her terror upon viewing the solar eclipse, feeling as though civilization has ended and she has entered the land of the dead: “The world which lay under darkness and stillness following the closing of the lid was not the world we know” (12). Others, viewing the solar eclipse near Dillard, exhibit a similar fear, screaming at the sight; Dillard also recounts that Louis of Bavaria in 840 reportedly died of fright upon seeing the eclipse.

In Essay 2, Dillard gives the history of many explorers who attempted polar expeditions and died due to harsh conditions. These explorers knew the danger but set out regardless, attracted by the “austerity” and seeking “something of the sublime” (35).