Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Dillard’s master’s thesis in English focused on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which describes the life of solitude and simplicity he embarked on beside Walden Pond. As Dillard wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her notes were littered with references to Walden and to her internal struggle over her placement within a tradition of nature writing. Dillard especially questioned whether she should write the book as a work of fiction with a first-person male protagonist. History sent a discriminatory message: Nature belonged to men.

Furthermore, it seemed that nature belonged to men who eschewed society. Figures like John Muir and Thoreau, from whom Dillard drew inspiration, were shrouded in the mythology of the hermit in the woods. Muir and Thoreau followed in the footsteps of the many writers and thinkers who have hailed the wonders of isolation. Spiritual writers like Lao Tse and Saint Paul of Thebes lived alone in communion with nature. In the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about his hermitage, a cottage in Montmorency, France, where he wrote his political treatise. Charles Darwin, James Audubon, and even Johnny Appleseed—otherwise known as John Chapman—further contributed to the mythology of the lone white man in the wilderness. Connecting with nature became synonymous with male solitude, and those who attempted to write about the natural world were scrutinized for their authenticity as hermits. In his article, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon recognized that the “mythic frontier individualist was almost always masculine in gender” (Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness.” The New York Times Magazine, 13 Aug. 1995).

The mythological figure in nature persists in contemporary writing and art. In the controversial 2017 nonfiction work The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, Michael Finkel details the story of Christopher Knight, a man who spent 30 years alone in the forest of Maine, starting in 1986. Finkel represented Knight as the last of these mythological figures, but popular television series like Man vs. Wild, Alaska: The Last Frontier, Alone, and Naked and Afraid test the strength and wilderness prowess of men and women, rewarding those who can overcome the psychological hurdle of isolation. Documentaries such as 2017’s Summoning the Recluse and 2013’s Surviving in the Siberian Wilderness for 70 Years connect isolation with natural wisdom.

However, many of the great figures who advanced eremite (hermit) mythology were far from purists, nor were they faultless in their pursuit of pristine wilderness. Thoreau’s cabin, owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a short walk from Concord. Many friends visited him, and his mother helped with his laundry and groceries. While Muir secured great swaths of land for preservation and conservation, his emphasis upon uninhabited wilderness meant the displacement of Indigenous American tribes. Christopher Knight relied upon civilization; his lifestyle was cut short when he was arrested for robbing more than 40 local homes and campgrounds. Annie Dillard, a suburban housewife from Virginia, was as qualified to contribute to the genre as these observers of the natural world.

Dillard alludes to and pays homage to eremite mythology in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She calls her home an anchor-hold, a reference to the isolated home of a religious recluse. The book is nearly devoid of people, and she left out references to her husband and suburban neighborhood. Dillard also recognizes the fact that the genre is traditionally male centered. Although she is the narrator of the book, at times Dillard compares herself to and refers to herself as a man—e.g., as a “king”—nodding to the genre’s stereotype.

Yet Dillard is a female author, writing from a perspective that is decidedly feminine. She stakes a claim for women as observers of and thinkers about nature, and she is not the only female writer to do so. While Rousseau escaped to his hermitage with his partner and her mother, Fukuda Chiyo-Ni, a Japanese poet and Buddhist nun, wrote poetry based on her observations in nature. While Christopher Knight slid between the trees of Maine, Mary Oliver tramped through the woods by her home in Massachusetts, observing and writing about herons, fish, and wild geese. While Thoreau was writing Walden, Emily Dickinson penned the lines, “‘Nature’ is what We know— / But have no Art to say—” (Dickinson, Emily. “‘Nature’ is what We see.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 322).