In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), Annie Dillard explores the creek near her home in Virginia with an infectious curiosity. Dillard’s writing ranges from detailed notes on the lives of muskrats to reflections on more grand-scale things such as “seeing” and light and God. “I propose to keep here what Thoreau called ‘a meteorological journal of the mind,’” she says, “telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights dizzingly lead.” She adds: “I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.”

Annie Dillard churns her way through story after story of Tinker Creek, but the book is not simply a collection of nonfiction essays.  Neither is it simply a history of place, nor simply an account of what she uncovers in the natural world.  The book contains all of these elements, but it winds up being greater than the sum of its parts.  Here’s why:  Annie Dillard teaches her readers how to “see.”  She devotes the entire second chapter to the topic of “seeing,” and she explains how she goes about it at Tinker Creek.  “…I analyze and pry,” she says, “I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head.”  Dillard also admits that there is “another kind of seeing that involves letting go.”  She tells us that sometimes we must just open the shutter gates, as if our eyes were cameras, and take it all in. 

For Dillard, though, looking upon something isn’t enough.  The physical act is the first step in the process of seeing, but when she returns to her desk and begins to describe the object, then it comes alive.  As readers of Dillard’s descriptions, we get to experience Tinker Creek through the filter of her writing.  The result is that we see beyond its snakes and spiders, its branches and bird nests and trees.  We discover, as Dillard does, that although seeing “comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.”  

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek moves forward through a natural chronology, with two of its chapters devoted to “Winter” and “Spring.”  Time acts as a thread that leads readers along as if they were strolling through a maze of wonder.  After a winter snow, the light at Tinker Creek is “diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl,” but when spring arrives, we rejoice along with Dillard who reports:  “A strong yellow light pooled between the trees; my shadow appeared and vanished on the path….”  Over the course of its seasons, Tinker Creek takes shape; this place is the book’s most endearing character, and the passage of time allows us to see its many different personalities.              

At every turn of this book, Dillard guides us around an edge that opens up to the unexpected. She couples humor and surprise with seriousness about her subject matter, and what emerges is a beautifully balanced story.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek rolls smoothly through a diverse set of topics, but in the end, we see how a place can elevate the mind, spirit, and soul.

Quotes from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

“I cannot cause light. The most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.”

“Catch it if you can. The present is an invisible electron; its lightning path traced faintly on a blackened screen is flat, and fleeting, and gone.”

“Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.”

“If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.”

“You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets. You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.”