Annie Dillard: At the Altar of Nature

This thesis intends to delve into Annie Dillard’s time spent at Tinker Creek. Why Dillard chose to go into nature is critiqued, as well as what she found. One of the things it appears Annie Dillard sought and found was a connection to the Divine. She had been searching for this connection in various churches but had not found what she needed there. There is another, perhaps more pressing, issue of the mystical journey Dillard went on as well. This was an internal journey, not a physical journey. Both of these topics are vetted for the purposes of furthering the study of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek as a primary nature text. Other texts by Annie Dillard were used in helping to give history in the writing of this thesis. These texts include: Holy the Firm, An American Childhood, and Teaching a Stone to Talk. Further work should be done to understand more deeply Dillard’s connection to nature