Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

In the second chapter, the narrator retells the accounts found in Marius von Senden’s Space and Sight. In one story, a formerly blind little girl visits the garden and sees a looming figure. Unsure what it is, she places her hands on it and realizes it is a tree. She calls it “the tree with the lights in it” (31), referencing the appearance of the sunlight through its branches. This image symbolizes wonder, especially that which comes from observing something for the first time. The narrator compares this idea to how bewildered and amazed infants are by the world around them.

The tree with lights also evokes encounters with the divine. The image recalls the imagery of the burning bush in the story of Moses. In the first chapter, the narrator witnesses the light and shadows coming through the trees and is overcome, just as the little girl is overcome when she recognizes the image of the tree for the first time. In biblical encounters with God or angels, individuals are struck blind or overcome with great feeling. That the girl in Dillard’s anecdote is newly sighted reflects Dillard’s blurring of the lines between light and darkness, seeing and not seeing, and knowing and not knowing God: Much as the girl’s new but unpracticed vision allows her to see the tree’s beauty, those blinded by divine encounters “see” God’s nature more clearly.

For the narrator, divinity is found in a sense of the present. In Chapter 6, while she stares at mountains outside of a gas station, she is overtaken by a feeling of being in the present and connects this to the divinity of “the tree with lights in it” (61), describing the latter as a doorway into the present (81)—a way to stop time.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek can be read in two parts. The first is via positiva, ending at the ninth chapter “Flood.” The second section—via negativa—ends at “Northing,” which Dillard claims is the counterpart to “Seeing.” Via positiva is the idea that God is present in nature and knowable. This theological doctrine emphasizes that the world and the universe are a direct reflection of God and can therefore provide instruction about the nature of the divine. As Dillard observes the natural world, she looks for symbols and themes that might represent knowledge about God. In contrast, via negativa is a theological doctrine that asserts that God is unknowable. This idea was first developed by Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus in the fourth century.

At times, Dillard’s work toggles between the two philosophical approaches. She calls life “a faint tracing on the surface of mystery” while declaring that nature has truth to offer about God (11). The narrator is often taken aback and left breathless by encounters with nature, such as when blackbirds fly away from a tree in one great mass or when a water bug sucks the life out of a frog. The examples represent this duality of God, and the narrator is left trembling by these spiritual encounters.

In the first chapter, the narrator recalls a neighborhood tomcat that used to sleep on her chest at night. When she woke in the morning, she was covered in bloody paw prints that looked like roses. In literary works, roses often represent the blood of Christ. This symbolism is further solidified by the addition of actual blood. The narrator tries to wash off the blood, recalling the imagery of baptism, but it occurs to her that she may instead be removing the blood the Israelites marked their doors with on Passover—the sign for the Angel of Death to “pass over” their homes. She similarly likens the paw prints to the mark of Cain, which branded him as a murderer.

The ambivalence of the blood foreshadows the work’s final chapter, when the narrator will reconcile the world’s dualities—beauty and cruelty, life and death—in the metaphor of the waters of separation, which purify through violence. The cat returns as well, solidifying the symbolism: The narrator wakes both “bloodied” and “dazzled” after the cat’s visit.

Throughout the work, the narrator references various lights and shadows. The narrator explains how shadows obscure vision. She describes clouds passing over the creek, making it difficult for her to comprehend the shapes in front of her. Once, while staying at the creek later than she planned, she is overtaken by darkness; everything around her feels sinister and unknowable. In Chapter 4, she says a shadow is “a mystery itself,” recalling the theology of via negativa, which centers on the unknowability of God.

However, the narrator is just as critical of light. Too much of it also obscures vision, as when one looks directly at the sun. Both light and shadow are necessary to make sense of the world. Similarly, both via positiva and via negativa are necessary to understand the nature of God. For the narrator, God is a lesson in dualities: cruelty and beauty, knowing and ignorance, darkness and light.