Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Summary: This series of connected essays meander like a creek in a wood. Dillard poetically describes her observations from a fresh perspective, looking at things with a sharp wonder and sweet contemplation. How do we perceive the visual world? What is the connection between the sea and sacrifice? She encourages the reader to “spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” She makes the connections between the natural world and the pleasures of humanity’s gift to create stories that live on long after the storyteller’s corporal self.

Review: Nothing I have ever read weaves small bits of biology and literature into such an iridescent fabric as Annie Dillard’s prose. She alludes to great Greek philosophers while watching lily pads drift downstream. She is nostalgic and yet present at every moment, watching the tinier processes of egg cells multiplying, or the way a mountain looks beautiful and foreign like a long lost friend. I wish I knew someone who was as fascinated by her world as she is.

Rating (1-10): 10 smooth stones covered in soft moss on the north side

Favorite part: “If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a sing atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin.” –p.128

Wine-pairing: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. He examines evolution and the beauty of everything fitting together. The color pictures of orchids and their fellow puzzle-piece fitting pollinators is irrefutably special and the explanation behind it draws as much awe.