In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard uses nature to talk about philosophical and spiritual topics. She exercises the habit of seeing, which is both passive observation and active creation, and uses it to explore questions of God’s goodness, or theodicy. Dillard’s creation—Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—does not deny that both cruel things and beautiful things exist in God’s creation. Dillard instead proposes that “[t]he answer must be . . . that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there” (Pilgrim 10). The result of Dillard’s decision to “sense them” and “be there” is her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which invites the reader to explore along with her, both in its content—stories of outdoor explorations—and in its overt position as a book, or something created in order to be sensed. Dillard champions the act of creation as the counterpart to the horrors found within creation; she presents creative action is her theodicy.
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