The Land of Little Rain
1903
The Land of Little Rain, written by Mary Austin and first published in 1903, is a collection of lyrical essays that explore the arid landscapes of California's Owens Valley and Mojave Desert. The work examines the relationship between the land, its indigenous peoples, settlers, and wildlife, capturing the stark beauty and complex ecology of the region. Notable for its poetic style and deep reverence for nature, it reflects on the challenges of life in such an unforgiving environment and highlights the cultural significance of the land's names and stories. This book is recognized as a significant work in early Californiana.
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“If one is inclined to wonder at first how so many dwellers came to be in the loneliest land that ever came out of God's hands, what they do there and why stay, one does not wonder so much after having lived there. None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous radiance of the spring, have the lotus charm. They trick the sense of time, so that once inhabiting there you always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done it.””
— Mary Austin
“endurance. But prospectors and Indians get a kind of a weather shell that remains on the body until death.””
— Mary Austin
“En nuestra sociedad, cuando una mujer deja de cambiarse el peinado, uno supone que ha superado la crisis de su vida. Si sigue ondulándose o alisándose el cabello con las modas pasajeras, suele suponerse que nunca se ha enfrentado a nada demasiado trascendental para ella.””
— Mary Austin
“They trick the sense of time, so that once inhabiting there you always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done it. Men who have lived there, miners and cattlemen, will tell you this, not so fluently, but emphatically, cursing the land and going back to it. For””
— Mary Austin
“Trust Indians not to miss any virtues of the plant world! Nothing””
— Mary Austin
“perpetuity.””
— Mary Austin
