What Do I Read Next?
Last Updated on July 29, 2019, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 241
- Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods, published in 1854, was Dillard’s most important model for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In Walden, Thoreau describes the two years he spent living alone in a cabin on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, recording his thoughts and his observations of the natural world through the changing seasons.
- Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982) is a collection of essays by Dillard. These pieces are similar to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in observing and reflecting on the natural world, but they move beyond Virginia as far away as Ecuador.
- The Writing Life, published in 1989, is Dillard’s exploration of her own creative process and search for an understanding of inspiration. She incorporates literal and metaphorical narratives, including the story of how she composed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
- Terry Tempest Williams’ An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (1995) is a collection of essays about connections between the natural world and our spiritual selves. Most of Williams’s essay are set in the American West, and unlike Dillard, she is ever mindful of her place in a human community.
- Another classic work of American nature writing is Henry Beston’s 1928 book The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. The book is an account of one year—from autumn to autumn—that Beston spent living alone in a one-room house on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
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