Mammoth has characters

(Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the April 2006 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine. Subscribe here.)

"But if you ever come beyond the borders as far as the town that lies in a hill dimple at the foot of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have knocked at the door of the brown house under the willow-tree at the end of the village street, and there you shall have such news of the land, its trails, and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another."

-- Mary Austin, "The Land of Little Rain" (1903)

You can still visit Mary Austin's house just off U.S. Highway 395 in Independence.

There, you will find the passage above still inviting fellow lovers of the land more than a hundred years later, set in bronze before the home in which she lived while she was writing her Eastern Sierra classic.

I stop by every time I journey south and spend a few moments' meditation trying to see this landscape as Mary may have seen it, how Mary might interpret its changes today, and how both of us might see the changes yet to come.

While Austin lived and wrote her masterpiece at the end of this tree-shaded street, she also fought Los Angeles' claims to Owens Valley water and advocated for the rights of local Native American people.
At the same time, over on the west side, John Muir was fighting the Hetch Hetchy dam and working to save Yosemite as a national park.

Though I dearly love the tales of both these fellow travelers, I sometimes think ecological and cultural insights offered in Austin's writing have been unfortunately overshadowed by Muir's popularity.

Of course, Muir's fame does not depend entirely on his literary achievements. I imagine there are many people who have trudged the entire John Muir Trail who have never slogged through his "My First Summer in the Sierra."

I myself have dragged many poor college students through it, even though I know they would have rather been hiking it.

On the other hand, almost anyone who knows Mary Austin knows her only because they have read her compelling portraits of how life was actually lived by residents -- the plants, the animals, and the people -- of these desert mountains.

While Muir still inspires multitudes to seek adventure and spiritual solitude among the glaciated pinnacles of his "Range of Light," many of Austin's readers, including those of us who choose to call the Eastern Sierra home, know how much her dramatic depiction of our region's social and environmental realities can inspire ongoing concern for "the land, the trails, and what is astir in them."

Reading John Muir helps us understand the special value wild things and wild places hold historically in our national psyche; it helps us understand and cherish our preservation of them. Muir's writing helped make these things sacred to Americans. His writing also did much to encourage their transformation from shrines into recreational travel attractions.

If good old "John 'O Mountains" was Nature's most divinely inspired priest, he was her best publicist as well. Do you remember how Muir, returning to the lowlands, finally finishes his First Summer?

"Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again."

In Mary Austin's writings, by contrast, the mountains and deserts of the Eastern Sierra are much more than places of pilgrimage for solitary seasonal ecstasy. They are places where careful observation of -- and responsible relation with -- plants, animals, and peoples belonging to particular environments are required for individual survival and sustainable community.

From her home at the foot of Kearsarge, Austin saw a land that could -- if we would give it enough attention -- show us how to live with it, and with each other.

Fortunately, you can still find "The Land of Little Rain" and other great reads by Mary Austin available in Eastern Sierra visitor centers and bookstores. For starters, any complete library of classic Eastern Sierra literature should also include "The Country of Lost Borders," "The Flock," and "The Basket Woman" -- all currently in print in paperback editions.

(Editor's Note: Mark Schlenz lives in Swall Meadows with his wife, Jane Freeburg. He taught environmental literature at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is author of an introduction to Mary Austin's "The Basket Woman," published in 1999 by the University of Nevada Press.)