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 Dillard'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 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. It touches on themes of faith, nature, and awareness, and is also noted for its study of theodicy and the 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.

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 Nonfiction, and in 1998 it was included in Modern Library's list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books.

Background and publication Dillard was the daughter of an oil company executive and grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Pittsburgh.Scheese (1996), p. 121 She read voraciously; one of her favorite books was Ann Haven Morgan's The Field Book of Ponds and Streams, which she compared to the Book of Common Prayer; in painstaking detail, it instructed on the study and collection of plants and insects.Dillard (1994), p. 173 She attended Hollins College in Roanoke County, Virginia, receiving both a bachelor's (1967) and a master's degree (1968). At Hollins she came under the tutelage of poet and creative writing professor Richard Henry Wilde Dillard, whom she married in 1965; she would later state that he taught her everything she knew about writing.Smith (1991), p. 7 Her master's thesis, entitled Walden Pond and Thoreau, studied the eponymous pond as a structuring device for Henry David Thoreau's Walden.Parrish (1998), p. 149 Dillard's knowledge of Thoreau's works was an obvious inspiration, although critics have pointed to many differences between their two works. However, in a nod to his influence, Dillard mentions within the text that she named her goldfish Ellery Channing, after one of Thoreau's closest friends.McIlroy (1994), p. 91

After graduating in 1968, she continued to live in Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she wrote full-time. At first she concentrated solely on poetry, which she had written and published when she was an undergraduate.Parrish (1998), p. 146 She began keeping a journal in 1970, in which she recorded her daily walks around Tinker Creek. Her journals would eventually consist of 20 volumes.Scheese (1996), p. 126 In 1971, after suffering from a serious bout of pneumonia, she decided to write a full-length book dedicated to her nature writings.Scheese (1996), p. 122 Dillard wrote the first half of Pilgrim at her home in spring 1973, and the remaining half the following summer in a study carrel "that overlooked a tar-and-gravel roof" at the Hollins College library.Dillard (1989), p. 27 She would later explain her choice of writing location as stemming from her wanting to avoid "appealing workplaces . ... One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark."Scheese (1996), p. 125 When she first began writing the book, Dillard would only dedicate one or two hours a day to the task; by the last two months, however, she was writing nearly 15–16 hours a day.Smith (1991), p. 8

Dillard's primary reader for Pilgrim was the Hollins professor John Rees Moore. After finishing a chapter, she would bring it to him to critique. Moore specifically recommended that she expand the book's first chapter "to make clear, and to state boldly, what it was [she] was up to," a suggestion that Dillard at first dismissed, but would later admit was good advice.Parrish (1998), p. 138 Before its publication, chapters of the book appeared in publications such as Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic and The Living Wilderness. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper's Magazine Press in 1974, and was dedicated to Dillard's husband. Editor in chief Larry Freundlich remarked upon first reading the book: "I never expected to see a manuscript this good in my life . ... The chance to publish a book like this is what publishers are here for."Smith (1991), p. 1

Summary

The book is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and consists of a series of internal monologues and reflections. Over the course of a year, she observes and reflects upon the changing of the seasons as well as the flora and fauna near her home. Pilgrim is thematically divided into four sections, one for each season, consisting of separate, named chapters: "Heaven and Earth in Jest", "Seeing", "Winter", "The Fixed", "The Knot", "The Present", "Spring", "Intricacy", "Flood", "Fecundity", "Stalking", "Nightwatch", "The Horns of the Altar", "Northing", and "The Waters of Separation".

In the opening chapter, "Heaven and Earth in Jest", the narrator describes her connection to the location:

I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle on a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about.Dillard (1999), p. 4

In the afterword of the 1999 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, Dillard states that the book's other, two-part structure mirrors the two routes to God according to neoplatonic christianity: the via positiva and the via negativa. The first half, the via positiva, beginning with the second chapter, "accumulates the world's goodness and God's." The second half, the via negativa, ends with the chapter "Northing", which Dillard notes is the counterpart of the second chapter, "Seeing".Dillard (1999), pp. 279–280 The first and last chapters of the book serve as the introduction and conclusion, respectively. The narrative is composed of vignettes detailing the narrator's wanderings around the creek. In "The Present", the narrator encounters a puppy at a gas station off the highway, and pats its belly while contemplating the view of the nearby mountain range; the reflective act of "petting the puppy" is referred to in several other chapters. In "Stalking", the narrator pursues a group of muskrats in the creek during summer. One of the most famous passages comes from the beginning of the book, when the narrator witnesses a frog being drained and devoured by a giant water bug.Pearson (1998), p. 29

Style and genre Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a work of creative nonfiction that uses poetic devices such as metaphor, repetition, and inversion to convey the importance of recurrent themes.Kitchen (2011), p. 117 Although it is often described as a series of essays, Dillard has insisted it is a continuous work, as evidenced by references to events from previous chapters."Books by Annie Dillard". Annie Dillard – Official Website. Retrieved November 23, 2011. Although the chapters are separately named—several have also been published separately in magazines and anthologies—she referred to the book in a 1989 interview as a "single sustained nonfiction narrative".Chevalier (1997), p. 224 Dillard has also resisted the label of "nature writer", especially in regard to Pilgrim. She stated, "There's usually a bit of nature in what I write, but I don't consider myself a nature writer."Scheese (1996), p. 120

The book often quotes and alludes to Walden, although Dillard does not explicitly state her interest in Thoreau's work. Critic Donna Mendelson notes that Thoreau's "presence is so potent in her book that Dillard can borrow from [him] both straightforwardly and also humorously."Mendelson (1995), p. 51 Although the two works are often compared, Pilgrim does not comment upon the social world as Walden does; rather, it is completely rooted in observations of the natural world. Unlike Thoreau, Dillard does not make connections between the history of social and natural aspects,McIlroy (1994), p. 87 nor does she believe in an ordered universe. Whereas Thoreau refers to the machine-like universe, in which the creator is akin to a master watchmaker, Dillard recognizes the imperfection of creation, in which "something is everywhere and always amiss".Papa (1997), p. 107

In her review for The New York Times, Eudora Welty noted Pilgrim'''s narrator being "the only person in [Dillard's] book, substantially the only one in her world . ... Speaking of the universe very often, she is yet self-surrounded".Welty, Eudora. (March 24, 1974.) "Meditation on Seeing". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2011. (Subscription needed.) Dillard seemingly refers to the idea of an "invisible narrator" in the sixth chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; while referring to the "infinite power" of God, the narrator notes that "invisibility is the all-time great 'cover'".Hardack (2008), p. 83Dillard (1999), p. 91 Nancy C. Parrish, author of the 1998 book Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers, notes that despite its having been written in the first person, Pilgrim is not necessarily autobiographical. The narrator, "Annie Dillard", therefore becomes a persona through which the author can experience and describe "thoughts and events that the real Annie Dillard had only heard about or studied or imagined."Parrish (1998), p. 126 Critic Suzanne Clark also points to the "peculiar evasiveness" of Dillard-the-author, noting that "when we read Annie Dillard, we don't know who is writing. There is a silence in the place where there might be an image of the social self—of personality, character, or ego".Slovic (1992), p. 66 While most critics assume that the narrator is female, mostly due to the autobiographical elements of the book and the assumption that the narrator is Dillard herself, Clark questions whether the narrator is male. Stating that Dillard uses "a variety of male voices, male styles" throughout the book, Clark asks, "When Dillard quit writing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the persona of a fifty year old man, did she then begin to write as a woman?"Clark (1991), p. 168

Themes

Religion and nature