Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

By Annie Dillard

This winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, and listed by the New York Times as one of the best 100 non-fiction books of the century, gives timeless reflections on solitude, writing and faith amid the beautiful though sometimes brutal world of nature on the author's doorstep in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Release date: Jul 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781848258358

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Reviews for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

[alexifrancis_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I expected a lot from this book as it seems to be regarded as a 'nature writing' classic. I found the writing varied, sometimes the author absorbed me with her observations and stories and at other times the book seemed erratic and the writing jarred with me. On one or two occasions I found the writing beautiful. However I decided that overall it was too irritating to continue with so I gave up about halfway through.

[rach2340 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book took me a while to get through mostly because I was reading others in between it. I can honestly say that I did enjoy most of it. Some parts I was pretty confused as to what Dillard was talking about but for the most part it was good. The reason I didn't like it so much because it was a journal type book. Annie Dillard wrote about her musings while living out near Tinker Creek. I normally wouldn't read something like this, but it was interesting. What I really like about it was the fact that it made you think about the world and whats around it. So all in all 3/5 stars.

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

While I really admired Annie Dillard's pure rapture for the natural world, I found the "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" somewhat tedious. Dillard really knows how put together an overwrought scene... absolutely flogging and interesting moment to death.There are lots of interesting tidbits about the natural world scattered throughout the book, but it can be tough to make it through the passages in between them. I liked that the book focused not only on the beauty of nature, but its cruelty and violence too.Overall, I found it an interesting musing, but hard to get through due to the way it was written.

[elpaca · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I live relatively near Tinker Creek (always think of that big truck stop just down the road), and being a "local" author was interested from that point of reference. Very dreamy, lovely read that evoked the mountains and the musings that most of us do around here. Peter Matthiessen is the master of this contemplative naturalist literature. This book of Dillard comes close.

[catek-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is appropriate to re-read this book during The Year of Darwin, as, among other things, it is an extended exploration of the principles of evolution as they intersect with human life and spirituality. I'm not surprised my pastor said it was required reading in seminary.

[keely_chace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck." For me, this quote captures both the pilgrim spirit and the poetic beauty of this collection of interwoven essays. Dillard's prose is exquisite. Her fascination with the natural world, freshly revealed on every page, is thoroughly contagious.

[monado_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a beautiful essay on the joy and wonder of seeing Nature. I just love this book. Annie Dillard writes about the mystical beauty and mystery of nature.

[eduscapes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nature writing is one of my favorites genres and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is on many "must read" lists. What I found most interesting is how the book reflected the time period when it was written. The early 70s were a time when many people were talking about our relationship with the environment. The first Earth Day and the Clean Air act are a couple examples. Like Thoreau, Dillard spends time exploring and observing nature. For me, the most interesting aspect was the way she conducted inquiries into topics of interest throughout the book. Rather than simply observing nature, she sought to understand the area around Tinker Creek and connect it to the larger environment. Whether talking about frogs, caterpillars, or muskrats, she motivates readers to pick up a science book and learn more. Although the writing is a little flowery at times, I can understand why it won the Pulitzer Prize.

[jd234512 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A glorious work by someone who has mastered the English language and has put together something of sheer brilliance. My only frustration with the book was how unfortunate it was that I had not read it until this point. She paints a vivid picture of her backyard and invites us in to observe what she does and we are lead to places overlooked. I hope to come back into this gem often.

[rosecityreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I want to like Annie Dillard, I really do. I think the world is a better place because Annie Dillard thinks and writes as she does. But, the bugs. Lots and lots of looking at, thinking about, and describing bugs. Some other creatures too, both larger and smaller than bugs, but mostly bugs. As much as I appreciate the conclusions Dillard draws about the natural world and the nature of God, her minute observations about critters and plants could barely hold my attention. I took pious pleasure in finishing the book, like I had done something that, while a little boring, had it’s interesting moments and made me a better person – kind of like going to church.

[the1butterfly · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Annie Dillard has a talent for combining reflection, introspection, anecdotes, and the many things she's read in a fascinating mixture. I've enjoyed all her books, but this one is my favorite by far. I found it inspirational for my own writing when I read it.

[dslongwhite · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a dense book that Karen chose for our book discussion group. Dillard lives beside Tinker Creek in Virginia and records nature and her interpretation of it in an extremely detailed fashion. She purposely keeps herself and her feelings out of the writing. One story that is rather gruesome seems to become a metaphor - she mentions it several times in the book. Once she was walking beside the creek and saw a small green frog. He didn't move as she approached. She watched as his eyes went lifeless and then his skin floated away. A giant water bug had sucked his guts out.I enjoyed her chapter on seeing and coincidentally read it in March on a plane to Florida. Dillard encourages us to look deeper and deeper, closer and closer into things, to keep our eyes open and to look at the minutia. She scooped water out of the creek and brought it home. Silt settled to the bottom and then she took a drop out and looked at it under a microscope to examine the amoeba. Interesting facts from the book - spring moves northward at the rate of 16 miles per day. A big elm in a single season can make six million leaves.

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It won the Pulitzer. It is revered by nature writers. It is lyrical. It is boring.

[stephenbarkley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In Salvation Means Creation Healed, Snyder lists the various ways in which God's creation is misunderstood. One of those ways is the romanticization of nature. When we romanticize nature we ignore all the nasty bits—biting mosquitoes, parasites, carnivorous critters—and pretend it's somehow pristine and pre-fallen.Dillard makes no such mistake.The greatest strength of Annie Dillard is her ability to describe in compelling detail the beauty and terror of the natural world in her own back yard.In one chapter, she's amazed at how a tree can transform "gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower" (112). A few chapter's later she's horrified by a nightmare occasioned by watching two huge luna moths mate—"the perfect picture of utter spirituality and utter degradation" (159).Speaking of spirituality, Dillard's reflections on creation are profound, ultimately drawing her into praise:"My left foot says 'Glory,' and my right food says 'Amen': in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise" (271).Like poetry, Dillard's prose has to be savored slowly. This is the sort of writing that should be read aloud—every syllable is expertly placed.Pilgrim is a classic for good reason. Dillard has paired her keen and honest observation skills with her beautiful mastery of language.You will read this book more than once.

[suzemo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is like a book of blog posts, you know, before there were blogs. Annie Dillard lives on Tinker Creek. She documents, in stream of consciousness essay style, some of her observations of nature. She throws in some facts that she "knows" (in quotes because there were a few things that were wrong, but my science education started 20 years after this was published, so I don't fault her) and goes off on a lot of tangents. She'll start with something and end up talking about newly sighted blind people, or of contradictions or of God or of nature's profligate waste or whatever it is that's floating around in her head.

The book was somewhat difficult for me. It wanders and meanders. One one hand, she goes on about some scene she has seen in nature, which is delightful to read and reminds me of some of the remarkable things I've seen in nature. On the other hand, she wanders into tangents that either don't matter or are not interesting. Because she takes her time to meander around subjects and go off into the most boring series of thoughts, it was hard for me to continue reading. However, I thought her writing was beautiful. The prose was absolutely gorgeous. It's like finding some food that has the most amazing texture. It slides down the tongue of your brain in pure textural delight. The problem is, the flavor is terrible.

I will admit, I'm not a fan of stream of conscious style writing. I rarely have trouble reading it (Faulkner notwithstanding), I can't help but find it annoying. And it's the whole book.

There's a lot of philosophy - God and contradictions. Thoughts of nature and fecundity and waste and destiny and randomness and observation vs seeing and innocence and self-awareness. I like my books to be about something, not about being about something.

The philosophical wanderings in this book do feel young. Kind of like a bunch of college students. They're young and brilliant and invincible and sitting on the floor, drunk, after a party discussing deep, deep thoughts. It's that kind of young metaphysical meanderings.

One of the things that bugged me the most about this book was the anthropomorphizing of so much. She did it for nature, for bugs, for trees. For someone who likes to pull in science or facts (yeah I know, she also blathers about God and other silliness), it just annoyed me. Probably more than it should have, given the kind of book it is.

Sometimes, when I'm reading, my mind wanders. I find myself 4 or 5 pages further than I last remember... I've been reading, but not reading. I have to go back and re-read to catch what I missed. I did that a lot in this book, except that my mind never wandered. I just couldn't be bothered to digest what I was being fed. Eventually I learned to ignore the metaphysical junk and just focus on the anecdotes of nature and enjoy those. And it made the book a little easier to bear.

It's deep. It's spiritual. It's pretty. I get it, I just don't care.

[booklove2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I needed to read a book like this right now. Dillard appreciates things within nature like a small child or a born-blind person with new sight.. noticing things down to the tiniest detail. (Literally -- she occasionally busts out a microscope and takes a gander at pond scum.) I only wish I was like that. I learned a ton of stunning nature based facts. And like I said, I really needed to read something nature based and appreciative of the little things. (I'm at the point of wishing I was sitting solitary in the middle of the woods and what better way to do things you can't really do than to read about it? Nature is always there for me to appreciate.) Dillard has studied theology so I was very surprised (and pleased) that she wasn't writing more about religion. This reminded me of the essays of Barbara Kingsolver and her book Prodigal Summer is almost a fictional story of someone like Annie Dillard.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While Bryson, regretfully, only pays attention to natural history in intermissive fashion (although his interest in the field is apparent), Annie Dillard is celebrated as one of the major natural history authors in America. However, in my opinion the text is 'too feminine' with less attention to actual botany and wildlife, and more holistically describing the overall experience of nature. Furthermore, at least in this book, there seem to be too many side steps to other topics, in pure essaistic style. Major influences and natural history writers are mentioned in the book. A light read.

[danhammang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Annie Dillard is a phenomenon. Her deeply insightful musings on the wonder of the universe that she records over the seasons around Tinker Creek in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains are a triumphant, exuberant demonstration of what the human mind can communicate through literature. She is in a unique place in her wandering, in awe, jaw droppingly horrified and profoundly mystical in her embrace of this world around us and the life that fills it. This is one of the best books I have ever read.

[poetontheone · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first thing that grabbed my attention as I began reading this book is the loveliness of its prose. The sentences are long and vivid and full of color. After forty or so pages, the line between colorful and purple begins to blur. Throughout the books, there are lines, or even a whole page, that shines. The sentiment and the language converge and deliver some powerful declaration, or pose excellent some cosmic query. However, the book slogs after awhile. I think you must go into Tinker Creek expecting highly self-referential field notes on wildlife, complimented by quotations and views Dillard uncovers in whatever she is reading at the time of such observations, and peppered with Biblical allusions. Dillard isn't necessarily preachy here, the allusions fit nicely enough within the wonder of her setting, but they sometimes feel a bit forced rather natural, as though she had to meet some quota on biblical references. At her best, Dillard shows us the majesty of nature through her eyes, all at once violent and beautiful. Despite this, I was frequently bored with her descriptions. It all began to seem too familiar. A uniquely presented work, but I suppose I'd be more apt to return to Barry Lopez if I wanted to run about the wild and winged things of the Earth.

[mazidi_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Overwritten, but beautifully so. And justifyably so: The dramatic extravagance of her prose reflects the inexhaustible spectacle of nature itself. She was 27 in 1972 when she wrote these reflections on nature, science, theology, and whatever tidbits of information were caputured, pinned to a table, and analyzed by the quixotic butterfly net of her mind. This is not a romantic ode to the beauty of nature. Yes, she sees the beauty but she sees the horror also: the transience of life, the meaninglessness of death, the frank speculation about what kind of a God set this all in motion.The framework of the book is a series of chapters corresponding to the seasons of one year as she explores the woods near her home in Virginia. Interspersed with her own observations are tidbits of science, followed by metaphysical interpretations. She sees, she wonders, she writes. Her responses to nature are visceral:"A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn't make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn't catch the consonant that shaped it into sense."This would be a great book to take on a camping trip or retreat. It is a book that I will revisit throughout my life like an old friend.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I dimly remember reading Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek back in the 70s. Recently, seeing excerpts and hearing gushing praise, I decided to have another look. One her website, Dillard has written the following, “I can no longer travel, can't meet with strangers, can't sign books but will sign labels with SASE, can't write by request, and can't answer letters. I've got to read and concentrate. Why? Beats me. // Please don't use Wikipedia. It is unreliable; anyone can post anything, no matter how wrong. For example, an article by Mary Cantwell misquotes me wildly. The teacher in me says, "The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts." Here is some information for scholars. (I’ve posted this web-page in defense; a crook bought the name and printed dirty pictures, then offered to sell it to me. I bit. In the course of that I learned the web is full of misinformation. This is a corrective.)"My twenty-fifth-anniversary edition also has a blurb by Eudora Welty, who describes the work better than I can. Welty writes, “The book is a form of meditation written with headlong urgency about seeing, A reader’s heart must go out to a young writer with a sense of wonder so fearless and unbridled. […] There is an ambition about her book that I like […] It is the ambition to feel.” That is precisely the effect Pilgrim had on me. Dillard spends much of her time looking at nature, plants, trees, insects, flora and fauna. Her wanderings bear a close resemblance to Thoreau’s wanderings around Walden Pond. She writes, “It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a life-time of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get” (17).I marked numerous passages and selecting good examples was no easy task. I loved the one about pennies, and it struck me that my habit of up picking coins of all sorts might have begun when I first read Dillard. Here is another of my favorites, “This is the sort of stuff I read all winter. The books I read are like the stone men built by the Eskimos of the great desolate tundra west of Hudson’s Bay. They still build them today, according to Farley Mowat. An Eskimo traveling alone in the flat barrens will heap round stones to the height of a man, travel until he can no longer see the beacon, and build another. So I travel mute among these books, these eyeless men and women that people the empty plain. I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I’m terrified that I’ll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake” (44).If it has been a while since you walked with Annie Dillard, pick up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, slow down, stop and smell Nature. 5 stars.--Jim, 5/28/16

[bruce_deming_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Annie enjoys nature in Puget Sound. More introspective than my tastes today

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Indescribable - very trippy meditation on being still, seeing, art, time. Beautifully written and leaves you with much to think about.

[librarianbryan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Solipsistic indulgence for those with the luxury of luxury but not the luxury solipsism. Kind of disappointing as this was on my to read list for years. Is it misogynistic to say it doesn't help that Tavia Gilbert sounds like a mom? Is it immature? Someone call me on my guilt for not caring about this person's summer vacation!

[frisbeesage · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Listening to the audio version of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is like having a lovely conversation with Annie Dillard. She meanders through whatever subject crosses her mnds, exclaiming over muskrats, frogs, and praying mantis. She wonders about the meaning of the things she encounters on her walks along Tinker Creek and then she forgets about meaning and just admires the beauty of it all. Her prose is gorgeous, more poetry then mere nonfiction writing. She's young, and it shows in her exuberant sometimes overly gushing enthusiasm. Her musings can be random and seem disconnected, but are more often charming and conversational. I enjoyed this chance to get to know Annie Dillard and the landscape she loved. I listened to this book on audio read by Tavia Gilbert. She does a fantastic job of capturing the energy, enthusiasm, and wonder of Annie's observations.

[anitatally · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Her writing is spectacular. It is exhilarating to read her descriptions of nature, and her own path toward meaning.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am a huge fan of Annie Dillard, but this audiobook was unbearable. I want to believe it was the terrible voice of the reader and not the content. I will have to try this one as a book, rather than an audio.

[tangentrider-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Seeing the world through Dillard's eyes is a marvelous thing.

[distractus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I remember reading this book for the first time. I found it extremely obscure but fell at once deeply in love with it . Within days I read it a second time; a third time, and then I started to see some connections. Nowadays, "Tinker Creek" is the best and most intimate friend in my library.In this book, the writer succesfully conveys the awe she feels when confronted with the duality of beauty and horror which are part of everyday life of the creatures in the woods and streams of a valley in the mountains of Virginia.This is as much a book of sound mysticism as of nature, written in poetical style. If these three elements are not alien to you, chances are that you might like it very much.

[carolp_72 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Something to reread when you are losing touch