Mary Austin is today’s featured author. Like most of the women profiled in Writing Wild, Austin charted her own course in life. Aalto describes her as “an ethnographer and feminist, activist and mystic, speaker and writer.” (p. 49) In her first book, The Land of Little Rain, Austin paints a vivid picture of the plants, animals, and people of the area between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of California. Unlike the region she’s describing, Austin’s writing is lush and evocative: this is a place she knows and loves.
Today’s poem is another Golden Shovel. With so many rich lines to choose from, it was a challenge to pick just one, so I have woven some of Austin’s other phrases into this poem. These words are italicized.
photo by Charles Lummis, via Wikipedia
Previous Writing Wild posts:
Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Reading to the Core 