Book Review: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Anne Dillard

Rating: 5/5

I am in awe of the depth and richness of this book. Annie Dillard “rejects the label of nature writer”, but after having read so many books on Natural History, I can easily claim that she is one of the best nature authors you would read. Undoubtedly, her writings deeply reflect on theological themes, particularly on everything created by the ultimate creator by referring to various religions, but her prose will give you intimate insights into beauty and cruelty, care, and indifference of the natural world, unlike anything I have read so far. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek follows the usual format of a nature book, narratives on season-by-season changes in the natural world around a local patch for a year. But, her side by side reflections and her attempt to grapple with the meaning behind all this drama surrounding the natural world make this book much more different and worth reading (I do admit that there are some difficult and at times, incomprehensible passages too). I read this book very fast, and now I wish I had not. It”s a book to be read slowly, closing your eyes every now and then, turning over your mind the words you have read. Normally, when you read a natural history book, it would be full of unbiased praises of nature”s beauty and benevolence, so much so that if you go out to observe Nature closely, it comes as a shock to realize that natural world is not a fairyland as authors generally paint it as. It is tough out there, full of grotesqueness, ugliness, hard life of death and vulgar fecundity, and all in all, not as pretty as painted in words. And, this book opens up that world for you to peer in. To realize that “to walk in the woods” is not always cheerful but full of truths of life and realities. We, humans, weigh the natural world in the scale of our sympathy, compassion, and mercy. Nature, though, has no use of it. It”s indifferent and goes about its work without feelings and emotional weaknesses. Unlike human feelings, wild has its own standard and it is doing quite good without our feelings and intervention. Nature then teaches us to be tough, in a way, with a bit of beauty thrown in for those who seek it only for pleasure and not for lessons, so that you can ignore the ugly part and enjoy nature as it seems to be. After all, no matter how complex the hidden world of nature is, we all feel unwinded and refreshed just by stepping within a circle of trees, by ignoring the internal details and basking in the external spectacles. But, all the same, Nature is created only minimally for pleasures in its beauty, and more infinitely to seek signs and lessons in it. Really, I can go on and on about how this book has made my brain churning thoughts and ideas, but I would rather conclude now, with a couple of contextually-related passages that I found mind-opening and so full of depth and meaning.

“That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time, we are also created. In the Koran, Allah asks, “The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest? It’s a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest?”

“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can […]”