In Mary Austin Country

I first heard of Mary Austin when searching for a new book to read. While perusing a list that the San Francisco Chronicle put out a few years ago ranking the 100 best nonfiction books about the American West, I noticed her book, The Land of Little Rain, at the very top. A laundry list of thoughts began to pile up in my head - I had never heard of her; I had never heard of this book; It was written in 1903 (by a woman roaming the high desert on her own, no less); How did this book make its way to the top of the list? As it turns out, this slight, unassuming collection of short essays opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the world.

Austin wrote about the West through her own direct experiences and observations. She reflected for a sentence, a paragraph or a whole chapter on subjects as small as an insect or as expansive as the sky. It was all connected in her mind, and therefore worthy of the time it took to explain how. She became a student of sheepherders and Native Americans - two groups who were marginalized and disdained by society at the turn of the last century. Her careful, compassionate observations of their daily life now provide us with a window into their world and an opportunity to reflect on our own perceptions and prejudices.

While on a road trip on the east side of the Sierra last weekend, I passed through the little town of Independence and took some time to visit the place Mary called home while writing The Land of Little Rain. At the local history museum I learned about resident Native American tribes, the Manzanar Internment Camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII, area mining claims, the Owens Valley water battle with Los Angeles, and details about many important local figures. Regarding Mary Austin, they had arranged a small glass case with original copies of a few of her books, a single photograph and a brief biography. I left the museum somewhat disappointed by this very humble tribute to a woman who has so illuminated our cultural and ecological understanding of the West. On the way out of town I passed by her home. A small historical marker stands out front with little information provided beyond a short, albeit compelling, quote. The 'no trespassing' signs around the property make it clear that this home serves as a monument only and not a museum. 

As I walked back to my car, I happened to glance to my right and noticed the flat wide street in front of her house heading due west out of town and straight up into the mountains. I heard her words in my head, "All streets of the mountains lead to the citadel; steep or slow they go up to the core of the hills." I realized that although her contributions may be assembled in a shadow box, summarized in a paragraph, or analyzed by professors in a classroom, Mary's real tribute is written across the vast landscape of the Eastern Sierra. She is a kindred spirit to those who wish to view the world with an unbounded sense of curiosity and wonder. How could such a spirit be contained inside four walls? 

And so here is my tribute to Mary...

"There is a Paiute proverb to the effect that no man should attempt the country east of the Sierras until he has learned to sleep in the shade of his arrows. This is a picturesque way of saying that he must be able to reduce his wants to the limit of necessity. Those who have been able to do so, and have trusted the land to repay them, have discovered that the measure is over-full. A man may not find wealth there, nor too much of food even, but he often finds himself, which is much more important."
-Mary Austin

"The shape of a new mountain is roughly pyramidal, running out into long shark-finned ridges that interfere and merge into other thunder-splintered sierras. You get the saw-tooth effect from a distance, but the near-by granite bulk glitters with the terrible keen polish of old glacial ages...When those glossy domes swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how long and imperturbable are the purposes of God."
-The Streets of the Mountain



"The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade green, placid, unwinking, also unfathomable. Whatever goes on under the high and stony brows is guessed at." 

- Water Borders

"The arrow-maker had a stiff knee from a wound in a long-gone battle, and for that reason he sat in the shade of his wickiup, and chipped arrow points from flakes of obsidian that the young men brought him from Togobah, fitting them to shafts of reeds from the river marsh...They drove bargains with him for arrows for their own hunting, or for the sake of the stories he could tell. For an armful of reeds he would make three arrows, and for a double armful he would tell tales."

- Mahala Joe

"Sometimes she plaited willows for the coarser kinds of basket-work, or, in hot noonings while the flock dozed, worked herself collars and necklaces of white and red and turquoise-colored beads, and other times sat dreaming on the sand." 

- The Coyote-Spirit and the Weaving Woman

"It is difficult to come into intimate relations with appropriated waters; like very busy people they have no time to reveal themselves. One needs to have known an irrigating ditch when it was a brook, and to have lived by it, to mark the morning and evening tone of its crooning, rising and falling to the excess of snow water; to have watched far across the valley, south to the Eclipse and north to the Twisted Dyke, the shining wall of the village water gate; to see still blue herons stalking the little glinting weirs across the field."
- Other Water Borders

"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." 

- The Land of Little Rain

"But if ever you 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, of its trails and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another." 

- Quote on the historic marker outside her former home

For the Birds

Puffy fair weather cumulus clouds dot the western sky as a glow of morning light spreads across the golden green meadow. The air feels cool and humid on the shady trail, but it is tinged with pronounced mugginess in the patches of sunlight - a sign that it will be another hot July day here in the Sierra Nevada. Hodgdon Meadow snakes along Old Big Oak Flat Road at around 5,000 feet above sea level, just inside the western boundary of Yosemite National Park. Ringed by stately evergreens and filled with waist high sedges and dense willow thickets, it is a haven for wildlife. Of particular interest this morning are the small winged aviators now gliding swiftly overhead and across the meadow in search of food and shelter. They fill the air with a cacophony of sounds - an undercurrent of warbles and chirps, overlaid by the melodious trill of a Pacific wren, and occasional punctuations of the Olive-sided flycatcher, “Quick, three beers!”. I’ve been invited by Sarah, a park biologist, to join her curious, energetic daughter, and a local volunteer from the neighboring community of Groveland for a site visit to a park project funded by a grant from Yosemite Conservancy. We are heading out to one of seven banding station where we will observe field technicians as they catch songbirds.

This delicate, diverse avian family has been known throughout history for its complex, inspiring vocalizations. In recent decades, however, songbirds have also gained recognition for their sensitivity to habitat loss. Significant declines in a variety of species have been documented, prompting scientists to take action. The Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) was established in 1989 to coordinate 500 banding stations to research and share information regarding the population and distribution of birds across the continent. This crucial long-term dataset looks not only at individual variables, but also the cause and effect relationship between them, making it a very power tool for scientific research.

When we arrive at the station, no one is around. A small black table is blanketed with papers, tools and writing utensils. Clothes-pinned to the length of one side of the table are small dangling cloth sacks. Some of the bags twitch sporadically, belying the contents inside. As the technicians make their rounds every forty minutes between seven different nets, they collect the birds that have become ensnared. A half dozen or more may be gathered during this time, so the cloth bags allow the birds to be safely transported and kept in waiting, until their turn to be examined. This state of suspension doesn’t seem to cause the birds too much alarm. Even after they are extracted from the bag, most are fairly calm as long as their wings are kept pinned to their sides. One exception are the Northern flickers, who vocalize a continuous stream of car alarm-like shouts while being handled.

Measure wing length, puff of air to the chest to check for body fat or a brood patch, puff of air to the skull to determine age based on the pattern of bumps that emerge as the cranium matures, spread the wings to look at feather condition, tip the bird upside down into a cylinder to keep it still while being weighed, all the while scribbling numbers and codes onto a data sheet. For all but the hummingbirds, look for a numbered band and if none is found, secure one to encircle the leg like a bracelet. After weeks in the field, this team works like a well-oiled machine. Questions and uncertainties are discussed and negotiated with the help of various manuals passed back and forth across the table. The slightest suggestion of curiosity by visitors is met with an assured, demonstrative response. It was explained to me by one of the technicians that each primary feather is assigned a number. Because juveniles and females are so similar in appearance, sometimes the only way to determine the exact species is by noting the difference in length between two particular feathers. I marvel at their capacity for attention to such nuances.  Sarah is clearly proud of the work they’ve been doing, and already wistful about losing her team lead, who was recently offered a position by the IBP to be a regional coordinator for independent field research teams.

The birds are examined with deft efficiency, and then carefully set free. After being restrained, some seem to forget that they know how to fly, and so they hold still for a moment suspended in time. At this point in the process, visitors are encouraged to participate. I am offered the opportunity to release an Anna’s Hummingbird, and suddenly a breath of feathers is slipped into my hand. I’m hardly aware of its physical presence, except for the warmth that concentrates and spreads across my open palm underneath its fragile body. I am coached to gently rock it back and forth onto its stomach, and with a few shallow bobs of my palm the sprightly bird elevates up into the air. The flash of movement and sudden pulse of wing beats against my hand cause me to gasp. I remember in that moment that it is possible to hear your soul shout for joy. I glance at my instructor and I see it in her eyes too – the childlike wonder of the moment when this wisp of bone, muscle and feathers manifests into pure grace. How privileged we are to be surrounded by such every day miracles.

Seeing the World in a New Light

I am obsessed with light. It started in college when I took an art appreciation class and learned about the Impressionist movement. The idea that a painter could paint not an object or scene, but rather the reflections of light, created a whole new way of seeing. Static objects within the landscape became dynamic as my awareness of sun-shifted shadows and highlights intensified their textures and colors. Sunlight unlocks the door to an infinitely more beautiful world.

Around this same time period I began pursuing photography as a hobby, learning to consider light as I composed my shots. I’m not a very technical photographer, partly because I don’t have the patience to learn about and practice the exacting art of manual focus and light control, but digital photography has allowed me to experiment and develop my creativity. To compensate for the restrictions of a point and shoot camera, I began playing with sunlight by filtering or blocking it with objects in the shot to control any resulting lense flares. I remember the first time I raised my camera up to the petals of a back-lit flower to take an extreme close-up while on a hike in the Tetons. The resulting photo gave me a miraculous new appreciation for the natural world.

As we meet our own needs for hunger and thirst throughout the day, it’s easy to forget that the plants and trees around us are constantly taking in nourishment as well. We gardeners know it more than most, especially out west, but even then how often do we really take the time to appreciate the systems that give life to the plant? I’m not a biologist by training, so it took me completely by surprise that night when I got home from hiking and looked at my photo on the computer. The sunlight had highlighted an intricate tracing of veins across the surface of that deep purple larkspur petal, and refracted to reveal a sparkling translucence that literally took my breath away. There are few things more beautiful in this world than a flower bathed in sunlight...

Ever since that day, I’ve been obsessed with documenting the delicate inner workings of leaves and flowers through my photographs. One of my favorite places to be is under a deciduous tree at midday when the sunlight is streaming down, illuminating the canopy of leaves above me. There is a quality to that vivid saturation of colorful light, which makes me feel intensely alive and keenly aware of the life pulsating around me. My body and the tree, we both absorb this invisible bombardment of photons and turn it into physical nourishment. We both move fluid through our veins as a means of surviving and thriving. We breathe in symbiotic partnership, each sustaining the other. In this moment I am reminded that it's not so much a matter of reconnecting with nature as it is simply removing the layers that insulate us from each other. The connection itself is impossible to sever...

  

This luminous way of seeing requires only a simple shift of perspective for wondrous details to instantly emerge. All you have to do is let your eyes be guided by the light... 

Bud, Flower, Fruit and Seed

Peter and I went to Merced Canyon earlier this month with the intention of viewing the peak wildflower season on the Hite Cove Trail. Shortly into our hike, however, we discovered that we were too late to catch the landscape at its most lush and colorful. Instead, we found ourselves walking through an ecosystem in flux - not quite blooming flowers were intermixed with those that had already spent their petals and moved along to further stages of reproduction. This fact gave me pause and emphasized the reality of the scene I had been seeking. These intricate artistic forms evolved for function alone thus relegating human appreciation to an afterthought from the flower's perspective. 

Fully feeling my insignificance, I was humbled to witness the miracles taking place all around me. I found myself transfixed by each plant, noticing the unique manifestations of bud, flower, fruit and seed...

California buckeye buds

Mariposa lily

Redbud pods

Fringe pod plant

Mountain dandelion seeds

Some of the most interesting plants to me were those that displayed multiple phases simultaneously. How the small smooth buds of individual flowers grew and changed shape as the petals began to split and open, revealing an often elaborate inner architecture...

Twining snake lily

Prettyfaces

Blazing star

Another plant displayed the transition from flower to fruit, demonstrating how its gently curved petals withered and dropped with little fanfare once the larger green seed-filled fruits took shape...

White globe lily

Globe lily fruit

Striking though a field of flowers in full bloom may be, I see now that the true beauty is in the process revealed through careful observation. The gradation of pale pink to spring green along the winged edge of a globe lily fruit, gossamer tassels attached by impossibly thin stalks to the dart tipped dandelion seeds, sunlight shining through the elaborately painted petals of a Mariposa lily. With a little attention to detail the functional becomes magical.  

For the Love of Trees

Do you have a favorite time of year when you find the trees especially beautiful? Myself, I can't decide between the delicate blooms and translucent greens of spring, leafy cool shade during the summer, vibrantly colored canopies in the fall, and the structurally striking bare months of winter. As I learn to navigate the world more frequently with all five senses engaged, I continue to be in awe of the diversity of trees that surround me everywhere I go. How blessed we are to have such beauty in our lives...

On this perfect June day in the Sierra Nevada, the vanilla spiced air is filled with steady birdsong and a tinge of coolness from the occasional breeze. Standing on the gently sloping forest floor at its base, I crane my neck to gaze up the trunk of a Sequoia tree. I feel the soft and spongy thickness of its bark under my fingertips and hear the hollow sounding thunk as I pat it firmly with my open palm. The resulting cloud of stirred dust hangs suspended in a shaft of sunlight that streams through the canopy.

Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in Sequoia National Park

The crisp clatter of dancing cottonwood leaves sprinkles down from above as strong sunshine strikes the drying grass. The earthy sweet scent of freshly fallen leaves wafts up from the warm ground as I lie on my back on the picnic table looking into the cerulean sky. This beauty astounds me to the point where everything else is stripped away - thoughts, words, memories, ideas - and I am left with only an awareness that I am alive on this glorious day and that there is nothing more in the world I could want or need than this moment.

Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) at Rattlesnake Springs

Long thin shadows stretch across the wind-blown snow as the last few hours of winter sunlight linger on the horizon. The interlaced silhouette of trunks and branches filters out almost all perceptible traces of warmth. A sense of cold, hard stillness and of life delayed makes everything feel sharper - the brittle vegetation, the powdery air, and the angular bareness of the trees, which will be lush with life and color in just a few months. For now the landscape sleeps with only the tracks of hardy mammals and the ripples of wind skimming across its surface.  

Mixed forest of deciduous trees at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge

Morning sunlight is just starting to creep over the tops of the rocks in Hidden Valley spreading a warm glow over the twisted shape of a dead juniper tree. Reincarnated as a home for cavity nesting birds, food for insects, and lookout for aerial hunters, this tree will live on in its new form until gravity moves it into the next phase of rebirth. I admire its unintentional beauty and sculptural grace, hard pressed to fathom how any human artist could perfect upon this natural form.

Single-leaf pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla) Joshua Tree National Park

The rain filters down through the canopy in a fine mist as I climb up the path from the stream bed below. Towering in front of me is an architectural mass of columns and buttresses simultaneously sinking down into the earth and arching overhead. The energy present in this rainforest is palpable. Plants are rooting, clinging, inching and unfurling in every direction, crowding the edges of the paved trail with anticipation. The strangler fig, in particular, has perfected the art of thriving in a highly competitive environment - it attaches to a host tree for support and eventually surrounds and absorbs it. In this place it is not so easy to forget that life and death are two sides of the same coin.

Strangler fig, 'Akaka Falls State Park

"Each moment of the year has its own beauty, a picture which was never before and shall never be seen again." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coastal live oaks, East Bay area regional park

Almond orchard, Highway 198 near Lemoore, California

Waihou Springs Trail, above Makawao on Maui

Aspen (Populus tremuloides), Mineral King District of Sequoia National Park

Palm tree, Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden near Hilo, Hawai'i

Ingrid and Steven's tree, Burnsville, Minnesota

Interior live oak (Quercus wislizeni), Sequoia National Park

Oak tree in snow, Sequoia National Park

Deciduous forest, Alden, Minnesota

Western white pine (Pinus monticola), Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park