Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, which won the 1975 Pulitzer for non-fiction, is a veritable feast for the visual and auditory senses. Dillard’s exhilaration at the profusion, complexity, and diversity in nature is impressive.
Immersing herself in the flora and fauna of Tinker Creek, Dillard charts its seasonal changes. Her observations are intense. Her prose is dense, adding detail upon detail, so much so that it occasionally feels labored and bogged down in minutiae. Taking nothing for granted, Dillard questions, probes, and draws connections. When describing the beauty, bounty, wonder, and diversity of nature, her words tumble out in language that soars, echoing Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty.” Her technique veers toward stream of consciousness as she makes associations and frequently launches into some wild and often perplexing mental leaps.
Threaded throughout her observations are anecdotes about nature; the words of philosophers and theologians; citations from sacred texts; and insights from botanists, zoologists, and entomologists. Her intense observations in nature trigger spiritual musings and meditations on life and creation. She communes with nature, but her proclivity to insert herself and her reactions into nearly every scene can be intrusive, blocking the view instead of letting nature sing for itself.
Despite its sometimes overly embellished language and its forays into self-absorbed meanderings, Dillard’s book is recommended for its observation of and exuberance at the diversity and beauty of the natural world. As Dillard shows us, natural wonders are at our fingertips if only we have the patience to pause, see, listen, touch, and smell.