Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeThe book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about her book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.Eudora Welty,New York Times Book ReviewPilgrim at Tinker Creekis the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of &quote;beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.&quote;Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.