Connie G's Reviews > Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The narrator in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek expresses awe at the wonder of nature in four seasons in very poetic prose. There were parts of the book that were exquisite in their beautiful phrasing. The narrator often had a playful voice when she described "stalking" creatures in the natural world at Tinker Creek, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia near Roanoke.

Annie Dillard is also seeing the Divine in nature. Looking at creation, which is often imperfect, she brings up many good questions about the nature of the Creator. She sees pain, suffering, and death when predators have to kill creatures lower on the food chain to survive. Using frogs, insects, barnacles, and other examples, she writes about how creatures must reproduce in great numbers in order for a few of them to survive, a rather inefficient means of creation. Dillard asks, "What if God has the same affectionate disregard for us that we have for barnacles? I don't know if each barnacle larva is of itself unique and special, or if we the people are essentially as interchangeable as bricks." Dillard often writes in a stream of consciousness as she puts down her thoughts about the presence of the Divine in nature, sometimes in awe and sometimes confused. She asks very good questions about God, questions that people have been examining for thousands of years. But her stream of consciousness thoughts were difficult to follow sometimes, and less successful than her observations about the natural world. I had a mental picture of her writing late into the night, wrestling with her ideas about a Creator who is both benevolent and cruel. The text is also sprinkled with quotes from naturalists, philosophers, and other writers.

The book is a good reminder to open our eyes, hearts, and minds to the wonders of nature. Dillard expresses it well as she concludes her book, "And like Billy Bray I go my way, and my left foot says 'Glory,' and my right foot says 'Amen': in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise."