On Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Michael Taber


As you are reading Dillard in the coming days, consider whether or not you think Dillard is a theist. Secondarily (and a different question), how much of what she says is compatible with a theistic or atheistic worldview?

In the reading for the first day, she is laying out the tension which will run through much of the book: the natural world is both violent and beautiful, and these traits are true of the world, not just our reactions to it. That is, the world is objectively violent and objectively beautiful. It consists of liquefied frog guts and elegant mockingbirds. And our puzzlement at how cruelty and grace can exist together should make us take Allah’s question seriously, as more than rhetorical.

Ask yourself this: based upon your reading of Dillard and upon your own experience, do you agree with Dillard that there is cause for bafflement here?


Dillard’s book uses a broad vocabulary, uncommon words both scientific and otherwise. Here is a reading companion for your own pilgrimage.

Chapter One

p.4: anchorite -- a religious hermit or recluse
p.10: insouciant -- carefree
p12: comber [KOM-er] -- a wave curling at the top
ex nihilo -- Latin for “out of nothing”

Chapter Two

p.32: danse macabre -- French for “dance of death”
p.35: discalced -- barefoot

Chapter Three

p.40: gibbous -- rounded or bulging; a gibbous moon is the moon between half and full, when the curves forming its outline are convex (i.e. bulging, opposite of a crescent moon).
p.41: pique [PEEK] -- resentment at being slighted
oriflamme -- a military flag or banner
p.44: plews -- a beaver plew is a beaver pelt.
char -- a red-bellied trout

Chapter Four

p.58: concertina -- a small musical instrument like an accordion
p.60: excoriate -- to abrade, to rub the skin off of; metaphorically, to denounce strongly
chitin [KAI-tin] -- a hard compound which is the chief constituent in the external covering of crustaceans and insects
pellucid -- not opaque; transparent or translucent
p.65: scrying -- to scry is to descry, to see from a distance
p.66: deciduous [de-SID-yoo-us] -- shedding leaves annually
p.69: geomancy -- a form of divination by interpreting the patterns made by a handful of earth cast on the ground
p.71: ultima Thule [THU-lay] -- a term used in ancient geography which stood for the northernmost region of the world
boreal -- of or pertaining to the north
lambent -- giving off a soft radiance; playing lightly over a subject, as in “Her wit was lambent.”

Chapter Six

p.79: brome -- a genus of grass
p.84: augenblick -- German for “moment, instant”
Verweile doch -- German for “Last forever”
papier collé -- French for “collage”
trompe l’oeil -- French for “fools the eye”; used of artwork of very fine detail which gives the illusion of tactile qualities
trompe l’esprit -- French for “fools the spirit”
ichthyology -- the study of fishes
p.85: eidetic -- pertaining to visual imagery
p.88: peneplain -- an area reduced almost to a plain by erosion
p.89: feu -- French as a noun for “fire” or as an adjective for “deceased”
lappets -- folds or flaps of fabric
p.90: frangible -- breakable
p.92: memento mori -- Latin for “Remember death”
p.97: runnels -- small streams or rivulets
desiccate -- to dry up (misspelled in the book)
conifers – cone-bearing trees or shrubs
weft -- a woven fabric
pavane -- a stately dance from the 16th century
p.99: pampero -- a cold, dry, southwesterly wind on the Argentinean pampas, from the Andes
tramontane -- a strong, polar, northwesterly wind in southern France
the Bora -- a violent, cold, northeasterly wind in the Adriatic
sirocco -- specifically, a warm, southeasterly wind from northern Africa to southern Europe; generally, any hot wind
levanter -- a strong, easterly wind in the Mediterranean
mistral -- a cold, dry, northerly wind in southern France
montana -- Spanish for “mountain” or “mountainous region”
p.103: taproot -- the main root of a plant, which grows directly downward
susurrus -- soft murmuring or whispering
p.104: laving -- to lave is to flow along

Chapter Seven

p.106: neutrinos -- massless or nearly massless subatomic particles; “Each second there are about 100 billion ghostly solar neutrinos passing through the tip of your finer, and every other square centimeter of your body, whether you are indoors or outdoors, or whether it is day or night, and without your body noticing them, or them noticing your body. At night [with the Earth between you and the sun] they go through the entire Earth before reaching you.” (NASA’s Cosmos, http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/view_chapter.asp?id=37  accessed 13 Nov 2016)
p.107: unified field theory -- a theory long sought by physicists that would unify gravity with the other three forces
p.109: raceme -- a pattern of flowering
p.112: etiolated -- made pale by being deprived of light
p.115: brash ice -- small floating fragments of ice in a sea or river
grease ice -- a thin, soupy layer of ice crystals on an ocean, that can appear like oil on water.

Chapter Eight

p.136: Gordian knot -- an intricate knot named after King Gordius tied a knot declaring that the person undoing it would be the ruler of Asia; Alexander the Great is said to have cut it.
cloaca -- the anal and urinary cavity of many animals
rotifer -- a phylum of microscopic animals
stet -- a printer or editor’s instruction for “let it stand,” indicating that previously cancelled material is to be retained

Chapter Nine

p.150: corm -- an enlarged, fleshy, bulblike base of a stem

Chapter Ten

p.167: pelagic -- of or pertaining to the open seas
p.172: ad majorem gloriam -- Latin for “for the greater glory”
p.173: gang aft a-gley -- an allusion to Robert Burns’ 1785 poem “To a Mouse”: “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,/Gang aft a-gley,” (stanza 7); Scottish meaning “go often awry”
astonied -- bewildered or dazed
p.182: wastrel -- waste, refuse; or a wasteful person

Chapter Twelve

p.213: enow -- enough

Chapter Thirteen

p.235: gall -- an abnormal growth on vegetation
p.239: fritillary -- any of several orangebrown butterflies
p.241: suppurating -- producing pus
fontanel -- one of the spaces between the bones of the fetal or infant skull
p.243: sub specie aeternitatis -- Latin for “under the appearance of eternity”
p.245: purulent -- full of pus
tallith -- a Judaic prayer shawl

Chapter Fourteen

p.247: Zugunruhe -- literally, German for “train commotion”
p.248: conventicle -- a secret meeting, especially for religious worship
p.252: pelage [PEL-ij] -- the hair, fur, wool, or other soft covering of mammals
p.259: redolence -- a pleasant fragrance
p.260: integument -- any natural covering, as skin, shell, or rind
p.262: grand jetéen l’air -- French for “great snatch or throw in the air”
sere -- withered
p.263: Fuge, tace, quiesce -- Latin for “Flee, be silent, rest”
hyssop -- the mint family; commonly used in religious ceremonies

Chapter Fifteen

p.269: wen -- a benign tumor of the skin
p.270: pellagra -- a disease caused by niacin deficiency, characterized by skin changes, and nerve and mental dysfunction
p. 272: hyssop – see p.263
p.273: maple key -- the winged seed of the maple
clarion -- clear and shrill
p.274: raising Cain – to raise Cain is an expression meaning to raise an uproar
Lazarus -- the Gospel of John describes Jesus as raising Lazarus from the dead


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