USC Belser Arboretum Book Club: "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

Welcome all nature lovers to the Belser Arboretum Book Club!

Interested in reading and talking about our world? Please join us for fun, thoughtful, informal book talks under the tall trees in the arboretum.

Meet Sunday, November 8, 2026, at 3 p.m. Arboretum Outdoor Classroom

The Bloomwood gate opens at 2:30 p.m., so please enjoy a walk before we begin.

PLEASE REGISTER in case we must change venue due to weather.

Discussion led by Hannah Rule. She is associate professor of English in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of South Carolina where she teaches first-year composition, advanced writing, essay writing, and graduate courses. She researches the teaching of writing and is the author of Situating Writing Processes (2019).

Order from All Good Books here

ABOUT THE BOOK

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

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We'll have snacks and beverages, and you're welcome to bring your own.

Note that trails are natural and hilly.

A portable restroom is available.

Please leave pets at home.