Pennies

Dillard begins Chapter 2 by recounting a pretty earnest (okay, and adorable) childhood game. Check it out:

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find […] I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions […] I was greatly excited […] at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. (2.1)

When you're a kid, before you realize how little a penny is worth, it's a big deal to find one. Money is money, right? But when you get older and realize it won't buy you anything, you might not even stoop to pick it up. In going to Tinker Creek, Dillard is determined to see the world through a child's eyes again; to experience the same concept of treasure a penny holds for a six-year-old. She writes:

[…] if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get. (2.2)

And with that, she's off on a mediation on sight and seeing. "The lover can see, and the knowledgeable" (2.8), she says—so if she can't know everything about nature, at least she can love it. If this love enables her to learn to see trees and frogs and insects the way a child sees a penny, then she'll be rich.