Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details an unnamed narrator's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began writing Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.

The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. Touching upon themes of faith, nature, and awareness, Pilgrim is also noted for its study of theodicy and the inherent cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at Hollins College. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the Transcendentalist movement; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir".

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper's Magazine Press shortly after Dillard's first book, a volume of poetry titled Tickets for a Prayer Wheel. Since its initial publication, Pilgrim has been lauded by critics. It won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, and in 1998 it was included in Modern Library's list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books.

In A Nutshell

Annie Dillard loves mantises. And muskrats. And frogs. And puppies. Okay, duh on that last one—who doesn't love puppies? She is not, however, a fan of giant, venom-spitting, innard-sucking water bugs.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—published in 1974 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1975—chronicles a year Dillard spent in a cabin in the woods in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, all by her lonesome, observing a ton of wildlife. Yes, including those terrifying water bugs. And poisonous snakes.

The idea for the book came, in part, from Dillard's study of Neoplatonic Christianity, which suggested two opposing routes to God: the via positiva and the via negativa. Philosophers who favored the former believed that God was omniscient and good—you know, the stuff you hear in church. Those who favored the latter, however, believed that God was unknowable, which made anything man said about God untrue. The key to glimpsing divinity, they said, was to look at creation and weed out everything that wasn't God. So, you know, roll up your sleeves.

Dillard decided to try her hand at both approaches, and divided her book into two parts accordingly. The second half, as you might expect, is decidedly darker.

Though Pilgrim at Tinker Creek brought Dillard an unwanted level of fame—she refused a book tour and interviews, and wanted to publish it as A rather than Annie—she was delighted when a reviewer called her one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th century." And make no mistake: This is a horrifying book. When you go searching for God through the lens of creation, you end up seeing some pretty messed-up stuff, like a bug eating a bug eating a bug…or a mosquito sucking on a snake's head.

Written in part as homage to Henry David Thoreau, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a slow, meditative book about nature, God, and awe. We're not going to lie: There's no plot to speak of, and when you get to the five-page passages about Eskimos and caterpillars, you might find it a bit of a slog.

But there's a reason English teachers have been assigning this read for decades, and it's not just to torture you. With its meditations on consciousness, creation, and cruelty—not to mention its dense, poetic writing—Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of those books that will make you see the world differently for the rest of your life. And if nothing else, you'll definitely never forget the part about the water bug.

 

Why Should I Care?

Most of us occasionally fantasize about escaping humanity and holing up by ourselves for a year with a giant stack of books. But Annie Dillard? Well, she actually did it.

All it takes is five minutes on social media to realize that humans are surface-level creatures. A scroll through the average friends feed involves the following: selfies, pictures of people's dinners, statuses about the awesomeness of current boyfriends/girlfriends and/or the lameness of ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and more selfies. We get so caught up in documenting life that we forget to experience it, as evidenced by the number of smartphone screens in every picture of every concert and sporting event.

Way back in the dark ages of 1974, Dillard realized that when she looked at the world through a camera, it prevented her from participating in what she saw. She became obsessed with what it meant to be truly present in the moment, and what the natural world would reveal to you if you cultivated that presence. What she learned was that true seeing requires patience—and that most humans don't have that kind of patience.

So if you're not quite ready to commit to a year of self-imposed isolation, you can live vicariously through Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Even if you're a social butterfly and you like it that way, we're willing to bet this book will make you put down your smartphone for a minute—which, if nothing else, decreases your chances of running into stuff.

Reception and awards

The book was a critical and financial success, selling more than 37,000 copies within two months of publication. It went through eight separate printings in the first two years, and the paperback rights were quickly purchased.^[45] Dillard was unnerved by the crush of attention; shortly after the book was published, she wrote, "I'm starting to have dreams about Tinker Creek. Lying face down in it, all muddy and dried up and I'm drowning in it." She feared she had "shot my lifetime wad. Pilgrim is not only the wisdom of my 28 years but I think it's the wisdom of my whole life."^[46]

The initial consensus among reviewers was that it was "an unusual treatise on nature".^[47] The book was published soon after her poetry collection Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974, University of Missouri Press). Reviewing both volumes for America, John Breslin noted the similarities between the two: "Even if her first book of poems had not been published simultaneously, the language she uses in Pilgrim would have given her away."^[48] The Saturday Evening Post also praised Dillard's poetic ability in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, noting that "the poet in her is everywhere evident in this prose-poem of hers: the reader's attention is caught not only by the freshness of her insights, but by the beauty of her descriptions as well."^[49] Melvin Maddocks, a reviewer for Time, noted Dillard's intention of subtle influence: "Reader, beware of this deceptive girl, mouthing her piety about 'the secret of seeing' being 'the pearl of great price,' modestly insisting, 'I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.' Here is no gentle romantic twirling a buttercup, no graceful inscriber of 365 inspirational prose poems. As she guides the attention to a muskrat, to a monarch butterfly, a heron or a coot, Miss Dillard is stalking the reader as surely as any predator stalks its game."^[50]

Despite being a bestseller, Pilgrim received little academic attention until more than five years after its publication. Early reviewers Charles Nicol and J. C. Peirce linked Dillard with the Transcendentalism movement, comparing her to Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.^[36] Author and environmentalist Edward Abbey, known as the "Thoreau of the American West", stated that Dillard was the "true heir of the Master". He wrote, "she alone has been able to compose, successfully, in Thoreau's extravagant and transcendental manner."^[51] In his 1992 book critic Scott Slovic wrote that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek eventually "catapulted [Dillard] to prominence among contemporary American nonfiction writers—particularly among nature writers—and stimulated a wealth of reviews and a steadily accumulating body of criticism."^[52] Gary McIlroy believed that Dillard's work is distinctive for its "vibrant rediscovery of the woods. [She] studies the wildest remnants of the Virginia woodlands, stirring all the dark and promising mysteries of the American frontier.^[53]

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1975, when Dillard was 29 years old. The jury noted in its nomination that "Miss Dillard is an expert observer in whom science has not etiolated a sense of awe ... Her book is a blend of observation and introspection, mystery and knowledge. We unanimously recommend it for the prize."^[54] Since its initial publication, portions of the book have been anthologized in over thirty collections.^[23] Subsequent editions included those published by Bantam Books (1975) and Harper Colophon (1985; 1988). The Harper Perennial 25th-Anniversary edition, which included an afterword by the author, was released in 1999. The first UK edition was released in 1976. The book has been translated into many languages throughout the years, including Swedish, Japanese, French, and German.^[13] In 1998 it was listed in Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books, both on the board's and the reader's lists.^[55]