Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

<p><strong>Winner of the Pulitzer Prize</strong></p><p><strong>The book is a form of meditation written with headlong urgency about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel. -- Eudora Welty <em>New York Times Book Review</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</em> is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.</strong></p><p>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.</p>