Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Tinker Creek symbolizes a sanctuary and a place of purification. It is a religious space where the narrator can think about and learn about God. Every month she visits the tear-shaped island in the middle of the creek. In the opening chapter, she describes this space as a place of transfiguration and revelation: “I come to it as to an oracle; I return to it as a man years later will seek out the battlefield where he lost a leg or an arm” (7). Traditionally, churches have been spaces where individuals could seek refuge from the law. The narrator projects the same desire when she visits Tinker Creek: “I don’t come to the creek for sky unmediated, but for shelter” (90).

In Chapter 6, the narrator explains that the water helps her to “heal” her “memories,” transmuting bad ones into something better. The description anticipates the discussion of the waters of separation and more broadly evokes water’s association with cleansing, especially of a spiritual form (e.g., baptism). That such purification rituals often hinge on violence—e.g., the sacrificed heifer, the Christian notion of being “washed” in Jesus’s blood—mirrors the Cruelty and Beauty in Nature that the creek exemplifies.