starting Darwin

Tomorrow we start Darwin, and I am trying to think of ways to get into that text. It is an interesting one, I think, because there is so much misunderstanding of what Darwin actually said and how he made his discoveries. I relate to him most as a person who LOOKED, really looked at things around him. One of my all-time favorite essays is by Annie Dillard and it is called "Seeing" published in a book called "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." In it she describes drawing a horse and really seeing it for the first time. I am a lousy artist, but I do draw sometimes because it causes me to slow down and really see. Most naturalists keep notebooks where they draw and take notes. Darwin's notebooks are quite famous; I would love to see them some day.
And in the way that connections have of happening--I looked up "Seeing" to see if it is in full text on the internet. Instead I stumbled across something almost as wonderful: an essay by Eudora Welty about Dillard's book. It mentions Darwin AND it is by Welty--whose book "One Writer's Beginnings" was the first book I ever read to try to figure out how to be a writer. Happy connections for me : )