Pilgrim Guide: Coming to Our Senses amid the Climate Crisis

Annie Dillard published her classic nonfiction work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek the year before the term "global warming" first appeared in print. Fifty years later, her close sensory examinations of the natural world in Pilgrim and her mystic struggle to understand a "creator" that also destroys make Dillard a unique guide for navigating our current climate crisis.

I explore rereading Pilgrim as a writer, scientist, parent, and spiritual seeker during the summer of 2023, a time when heat waves, wildfires, and flooding worldwide made climate change palpable. Interweaving stories of my childhood and climate science training with accounts of exploring my local creek with my young daughter, I reflect on how to guide her toward an unmapped future.