Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person (Central Narrator)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a memoir, a nonfiction account of a specific time and place by the person who experienced it. Dillard is telling us what she saw, what she read, and how she felt about it. It would be a little weird to write a memoir in anything but the first person—if someone uses the third person when talking about themself, psychological help might be in order.