Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard

Monarchs are “tough and powerful, as butterflies go.” They fly over Lake Superior without resting;

the monarchs crossing high over the water take an inexplicable turn towards the east. Then when they reach an invisible point, they all veer south again. Each successive swarm repeats this mysterious dogleg movement, year after year. Entomologists actually think that the butterflies might be “remembering” the position of a long-gone, looming glacier. In another book I read that geologists think that Lake Superior marks the site of the highest mountain that ever existed on this continent.

I could barely scent a sweetness, I could almost name it…fireflies, sparklers—honeysuckle. He smelled like honeysuckle; I couldn’t believe it. I knew that many male butterflies exuded distinctive odors from special scent glands,

The monarchs clattered in the air, burnished like throngs of pennies, here’s one, and more, and more. They flapped and floundered; they thrust, splitting the air like the keels of canoes, quickened and fleet. It looked as though the leaves of the autumn forest had taken flight, and were pouring down the valley like a waterfall, like a tidal wave,

Before the aurora borealis appears, the sensitive needles of compasses all over the world are restless for hours, agitating on their pins in airplanes and ships, trembling in desk drawers, in attics, in boxes on shelves.

Teaching a Stone to Talk,

her 1992 publication, The Living, a sprawling historical novel set in the Pacific Northwest.

Books by Annie Dillard Modern American Memoirs The Annie Dillard Reader Pilgrim at Tinker Creek The Maytrees For the Time Being Mornings Like This The Living The Writing Life An American Childhood

Encounters with Chinese Writers Teaching a Stone to Talk Living by Fiction Holy the Firm