“I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.” Annie Dillard’s 1982 essay starts on a mossy fallen tree at Hollins Pond, two acres of water six inches deep, with a 55-mph highway at one end and nesting wood ducks at the other. From one stare she draws a way to live: grasp your one necessity and don’t let it go. The essay is collected in The Abundance.