Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1^st Perennial classics Ed. New York : HarperPerennial, 1998, 288 p. (first published 1974).

I re-read this book over the last month or so. It's wonderful - a rare book of incredible linguistic beauty. It should be compulsory reading for anyone with an interest in the natural sciences, if only to remind ourselves that the natural world was here long before the science ever was, and of our place in the scheme of things. This reading I discovered that this book (very deservedly) won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 1975.

The quality of Annie Dillard's prose is evident from the first few paragraphs. Try this quote from p.5:

"Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home."

Ms Dillard generously provides an afterword, written for this edition. There are some gems here, too, perhaps well-suited to postgraduate writing, for example: 

"...mathematicians do good work while they are young because as they age they suffer 'the failure of the nerve for excellence.' The phrase struck me, and I wrote it down. Nerve had never been a problem; excellence sounded novel." (p.279)

Of course, the book does not fail to discuss soils and landscapes:

"Under my spine, the sycamore roots suck watery salts. Root tips thrust and squirm between particles of soil, probing minutely; from their roving, burgeoning tissues spring infinitesimal root hairs, which affix themselves to specks of grit and sip." (p.97)

"Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time." (p.139)

Read this book. Even if natural sciences are not your thing, I doubt you'll regret it. 

Book cover image from www.librarycatalogue.act.gov.au