Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

What I love about Annie Dillard is that she gets down on her hands and knees—in the mud, the stream, the grasses, the forest floor—and really examines nature. She notices the smallest intricacies in nature and wonders not only “Why?” but more importantly, “Why is it beautiful?” The pleasure in each intricacy that Dillard observes is found in the fact that “it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.” For Dillard, part of this pizzazz lies in birds and birdsong. Throughout Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she is constantly referring to the different bird species that live near her, particularly the mockingbird, wild goose, hummingbird, sparrow, goldfinch, robin, and coot. Dillard often references birdsong and migration.

In the very beginning of the book, Dillard describes an experience she had: “About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.” Right before the mockingbird is dashed to the ground, it unfolds its wings and soars away. Dillard writes, “…beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” Throughout the book, Dillard keeps returning to this scene. Time after time, when describing some act of grace or beauty in nature, she concludes by commenting on the mockingbird’s freefall. The scene, remembered from five years previous to Dillard’s writing, obviously stood out in her mind and was important enough to return to throughout her book. The mockingbird comes to represent not only beauty and grace in nature, but also wonder: why did the mockingbird plunge from the rooftop? But more importantly, why did Dillard find it so beautiful?

Dillard continually finds this beauty in nature, and she particularly finds beauty in the small things. Insects and birds, the smallest creatures, are constantly referred to and described in the book. It is as if Dillard is trying to see the world from smaller eyes: the universe is immediately bigger and filled with so much more. Each detail is given particular attention. Dillard is not afraid to spend time observing nature; in fact, she tries her best to keep still so that fleeting birds do not fly away at her movement. When observing a coot in the creek, Dillard runs from tree to tree each time the bird dives below the surface; she tries to stay behind the trees so the bird will not notice her, and if she gets caught in the open, she pretends to be a tree herself. Similarly, when observing a green heron, Dillard writes “…my only weapon was stillness, and my only wish its continued presence before my eyes.” She watches the green heron eat its dinner for half an hour before the bird “winged slowly away upstream, around a bend, and out of sight.”

Dillard writes, “A bird’s feather is an intricacy; the bird is a form; the bird in space in relation to air, forest, continent, and so on, is a thread in a texture.” In this statement, Dillard is expressing the essential part that birds play in the environment. Each bird is a woven thread in an embroidered landscape; each is an integral intricacy in Dillard’s world. “Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly,” Dillard writes. It doesn’t matter why, but it matters that we are there to witness it and that we find it beautiful.