Total Eclipse, We See Two Essay

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Usually it is a bit of a trick to keep your knowledge from blinding you. But during an eclipse it is easy. What you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know (Dillard 7).

Like Dillard experienced in watching the awesome total eclipse and as she marveled at the phenomenon, Ehrlich too found awe-inspiring things in Wyoming. She states that when she first decided to go to Wyoming it was to "lose myself" (Ehrlich 3) (something that Dillard does as well while watching the total eclipse), but Ehrlich was never able to return to California because she was so steadied by Wyoming's "absolute indifference" (4). She expected to be numbed out by Wyoming, but what she found was that she was woken up. Dillard also speaks about waking up. She says, "We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up" (Dillard 13). This is -- perhaps -- the 'noumena' (or thing-in-itself). Waking up is something that sometimes is unexpected, as it was in Ehrlich's case, but it is also something that we sometimes have to become aware of. "We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall," (Dillard 13).

Ehrlich states that in most parts of Wyoming people are outnumbered by animals. "Eagles look like small people as they eat car-killed deer by the road. Antelope, moving in small, graceful bands, travel at sixty miles per hour, their mouths open as if drinking in the space" (Ehrlich 6). Dillard takes in the animals on her journey, watching them with innocence.

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Both authors evoke the sense that the animals that they encounter are just as natural in their habitat as we are. We may look upon them as strange, as Dillard does the birds in the treetops, or we may look upon them as part of the landscape as Ehrlich does. Either way, what is clear is that the animals are taking up the same space that we are and they are just as entitled. We all go about our business oftentimes without caring or even noticing the other. In epistemological terms, the birds, the eagles, the antelope, the sun, moon, sky and sheep are all a part of something greater and we have to wake up to bear witness to the greatness that it is.

Both writers -- Ehrlich and Dillard -- have an enormous respect for the space that is around them and all that the space holds. While Ehrlich tends to spend more time discussing what it is actually like living in a place like Wyoming, a place that seems to barren yet so full of life, Dillard seems to be searching for something greater in her writing -- perhaps the meaning of life (and death). Both women, however, seemed to find some kind of healing in writing about nature as well.

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