Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

A type of beauty that shines in the mangled creatures she so carefully devotes her attention to. The shifting seasons, attuned to the natural cycle, provide sporadic moments of enlightening contemplations about creation and the forces that make the world spin on its axis under the inanimate, unknown universe that allows stars to become the source of warmth and life regardless of an apparently soulless disorder of things.ĭillard’s conception of beauty is based on emptying the mind and abandoning the constant recognition of the self to surrender to one’s surroundings, making the natural world the protagonist and not the background of our erratic, uncertain and insignificant lives.

Each chapter evokes the grotesque transformation that insects, reptiles, fish and animals undergo to adapt to the indifferent natural habitat that fosters, disfigures and finally kills them. There is something remarkably spiritual about Dillard’s thorough observations and painfully accurate descriptions of the natural world in Tinker Creek, her home in Virginia. 'I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest'. The opening line of this memoir is a treasure: For nature does reveal as well as conceals: now-you-don't see it, now-you-do'. Revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say a vision that it is a deliberate gift, a Deer apparentlyĪscend bodily into heaven the brightest oriole fades into leaves. A fish flashes, then dissolves in water before my eyes like so much salt.

'Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see- it, now-you-don't affair. Here's a sample excerpt I read a few times myself: Dillard: her writing talent, her natural curiosity for the natural world around her - and her adventures while walking. I didn't understand everything - yet the writing is exquisite.

This is also the first book I've read by Annie Dillard. This is the 2nd book I've recently read which was written in the 70's.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard