This famous picture by Matt Dave shows a shark just before it emerges from water, breaking its surface tension. More details/photos: http://bit.ly/3HZVigR

[David Attenborough Fans]

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“The creatures I seek do not want to be seen.”

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Say you have seen something. You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time's soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. Then what?

— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinder Creek (Harper & Row, 1974) (via Alive on All Channels)

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence… “Seem like we’re just set down here,” a woman said to me recently, “and don’t nobody know why.”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard

I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

I borrowed a microscope from the library and ordered some slides online so I can take samples of water near me and stare spring in the eye!!!!!!!

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: “This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.”

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard

We all reflect something. Perhaps the practice Is to pay attention To what we place ourselves I'm front of, and to pause Long enough and breathe So it can settle in our soul.

Stuart Higginbotham

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The girl who was no longer blind

January 2023 (Vol. XXXVI, No. 1)

When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I'm still spending that power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

~ Annie Dillard in PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard book recommendation by Rachel Sylvan

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard This is 1 of 12 vintage paperback classics that comprise our current giveaw@y.

I like the slants of light. I'm a collector.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

“Signed presentation from Dillard on the front endpaper: “For Bill & Sandy, with all good wishes & love, Richard Dillard.” Dillard’s first book of poetry, including Section III "Amoretti for Annie" about his wife, writer Annie Doak Dillard.” (Antic Hay Rare Books)