There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

Dillard’s line treats natural forces as if they had distinct kinds of agency. Sunlight is not merely illumination but a palpable, bodily power—“muscular,” as though it can press, lift, and drive life into motion. Wind, by contrast, is cast as “spiritual”: invisible, restless, and suggestive of presence without substance. The pairing implies a correspondence between the physical and the numinous in the natural world, a hallmark of Dillard’s writing, where close observation becomes a route to metaphysical insight. The sentence also hints that different elements “work” on us differently—sun by energizing the body, wind by stirring the mind or soul.