What Nature’s Silence Said to Annie Dillard

The late writer believed that hearing the natural world is its own form of prayer.

Jill Krementz September 16, 2026, 3:49 PM ET Share Save “Nature’s silence is its one remark,” Annie Dillard wrote in a 1981 Atlantic essay. Dillard, who died yesterday at age 81, spent her life listening.

She opens that essay, “Teaching a Stone to Talk” —which was later adapted into a collection by the same title—with the story of a man named Larry who is trying to get a rock to speak to him. “He keeps it on a shelf,” she writes, protected “by a square of untanned leather, like a canary asleep under its cloth. Larry removes the cover for the stone’s lessons.” Dillard is not sure what exactly happens at these lessons, but she respects the process: “It is a noble work, and beats, from any angle, selling shoes.”