She's chosen two different methods for seeing the divine: the via positiva, which asserts that God is omniscient and good, and the via negativa, which asserts that God is unknowable, but we can get a glimpse through looking at his creations. She's chosen to isolate herself from humanity in order to get closer to God. In early March, she goes on a road trip and contemplates isolation. This insistence on coming back to the place where people are trying to kill you is a form of fixedness, which means doing the same thing over and over, even when it's harmful. Virginia officials have tried a lot of ways to exterminate them, but they keep coming back, and when they all take to the sky at once, she finds them beautiful. She talks about starlings, pesky birds that tend to overrun the place. Still, she's committed to being there to see whatever nature wants to show her, which she feels is the least she can do. In a meditation on seeing, she explains that specialists in any given field (by which we mean a field of study, not an actual field, like the one she happens to be in) are able to see more than non-specialists, simply because they know what they're looking for. She's always looking for new things, because she's keeping, as Thoreau called it, "a meteorological journal of the mind." Basically, she's going to tell us about everything she sees for a year. (Somehow, she didn't mind.) She goes out for a walk and describes Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Tinker Creek is located. Annie wakes up one winter morning and tells us a story about her cat, who used to come in through the window at night and claw her face.
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