"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
In This Kit You’ll Find:
- 3 copies of Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner
- 3 copies of The Same River by Lisa Reddick
- 3 copies of The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
- 3 copies of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- 1 copy of discussion questions for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (you may keep)
- Book sign-up sheet to keep track of books (you may keep)
Themes for Discussion:
- Beautiful Swimmers: The Chesapeake Bay, community life, coastal towns, blue crabs, crabbing, fishers
- The Same River: Female biologists, environmentalism, rivers, Native American women, stream ecology, dams, environmental protection
- The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry: land & nature, family, community, tradition
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Nature, women in nature, seasons
About the Book:
Beautiful Swimmers: Combines a natural history of the Atlantic blue crab with an historical and ecological study of Chesapeake Bay and a chronicle of the commercial crabber's year. (Novelist)
The Same River: A tale of two women living on the Nesika River in central Oregon - a biologist fighting to save the river she loves and a Native American woman battling invasive danger on the same river 200 years earlier. (Novelist)
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry: One hundred poems written between 1957 and 1996, chosen by the author from nine previously published collections.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: A series of connected essays that chronicle a year at Tinker Creek in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. It challenges readers to study their surroundings beyond their familiar surfaces. (Novelist)
Further Your Discussion:
- Listen: Author of The Same River, Lisa Reddick, is interviewed about her book and the landscape that inspires her writing in this podcast episode of Authors of the Pacific Northwest:
- Watch: The PBS film documentary inspired by William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers, Beautiful Swimmers Revisited made by author Tom Horton, photographer Dave Harp, and filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown:
- Listen & Watch: Bill Moyers interviews writer & poet, Wendell Berry, about his hopes for humanity during a celebration of his life & ideas marking the 35th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book, The Unsettling of America.
- Follow & Read: The Atlantic article, The Thoreau of the Suburbs about what it meant for Annie Dillard to write Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
