Overlooked Riches
The narrator relates a strange compulsion from childhood to occasionally hide a penny on the sidewalk and then draw arrows pointing to its location for some interested stranger to discover and enjoy. The purpose was not to enrich someone beyond all their needs, but to make someone’s day simply by virtue of finding riches that otherwise would likely have remained overlooked. The adult who sprang from that unusual child turns the table when looking into the pristine wilderness which would otherwise have remained overlooked and sees the gift left by nature to be found and enrich one’s life in just the smallest way:
“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.”
Intricacy
The chapter titled “Intricacy” offers an interesting philosophical change of pace from the those which preceded it as the narrator becomes more meditative in the contemplation of the nature of order in the universe and the seemingly robust evidence pointing to an intelligent design. Ellery, the pet goldfish, plays a big part here as examination of the environmental conditions of its existence leads to a scientific epiphany on the fundamental nature of design, parsed through metaphor:
“Evolution, of course, is the vehicle of intricacy.”
Darkness at Tinker Creek
Although assuredly a celebration of the natural world and a hymn to the coming end of days for much of the unspoiled wilderness still left untouched by cement-laced progress, not everything is hippie sandals and peace, love and understanding. The narrator views the beauty of nature through a realistic lens: everything—literally everything—that lives is born with a death sentence. Rather than wallowing in this aspect, however, it can be perceived as motivation to enjoy life as it exists to an even greater degree. Still, the darkness is undeniable:
“The world has signed a pact with a devil; it had to. It is a covenant to which everything…is bound.”
Heisenberg at Tinker Creek
An inherent contradiction exists in any attempt to write about living under certain conditions while attempting to actually lived under those conditions and the narrator recognizes it and brings it in close for examination after experiencing a moment of utter connectedness with the world; an experiential revelation of what distinguishes the feeling of truly living in the moment without self-awareness that you are at one with everything around you. The contemplation of the rarity of this occurrence leads down an unexpected path of comprehension: it is not an experience likely to ever happen within a crowd.
“Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.”
When Mere Words Won't Do
As the moment draws near to leave Tinker Creek and the events and consequences c0ntributing to the book behind, the narrator’s intuitive understanding that only metaphorical language will suffice to convey the profundity of the experience seems to take over completely. The waters of the creek itself on this day are low and glossy and it is this very benign appearance which lends it such a poetic inspiration:
“These are the waters of beauty and mystery, issuing from a gap in the granite world; they fill the lodes in my cells with a light like petaled water, and they churn in my lungs mighty and frigid. And these are also the waters of separation: they purify, acrid and laving, and they cut me off.”
