IN THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN; A look at Mary Austin's work

One weekend when I was in grad school, I was seized with the irresistible desire to take a long nap outdoors. I was experiencing a lot of turmoil, and I knew that if I could escape to a quiet place for just a little while, I would feel much better. The most peaceful place within my reach was the California desert. So I drove a few hours to Joshua Tree National Park, paid the entrance fee, and pulled over at a likely looking picnic area. I walked a few hundred yards back behind some giant boulders to avoid making any tourists nervous and just curled up on the sand. It was fall, the temperature was cool, and everything was quiet except for the gentlest of breezes stirring in dead grass. I woke up about an hour later, refreshed and clear-headed, having found exactly what I was looking for.

Of course, I am not alone in seeking peace in the desert. Throughout human existence people have escaped to the dry, empty places of the earth to find the kind of serenity that only comes from solitude and a submission to forces greater than we are. In The Land of Little Rain (Penguin, $12), Mary Austin (1868-1934) writes of her sojourns in a specific desert, the region between the Sierra Nevada mountains and Death Valley in California. Like most deserts of the world, this one is scantily settled and lightly explored in general; it shows up even on current maps largely as blank space except for the shaky red line of Highway 395. Like most other deserts, it changes slowly. In the one hundred years since this book was published, the military has pierced the stillness with test ranges, Owens Lake has shrunk dramatically, and most of the ranchers have moved on, but I think Austin would easily recognize her old stomping grounds.

What did Austin and others like her find so attractive in this forbidding landscape of sand, tough shrubs, and furtive animals? One, perhaps obvious, answer would be the lack of human imprint. Though she writes with fondness of fellow desert inhabitants such as sheepherders, miners, and Indians, most of the book details the absence of people in this country. The desert has absolutely no need for humans, in fact it disdains them, and when they enter its borders they must either bend to its will or be destroyed. In her portrayal of a miner whose only companions were a couple of pack burros, she described how he worked day after day "burrowing to oblivion in the sand" in a "lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful, terrible." But this land "tolerated him as it might a gopher or a badger. Of all its inhabitants it has the least concern for man."

Within the framework of achingly beautiful prose, Austin finds the desert's disregard of humanity ultimately comforting. It may seem paradoxical to be glad to discover you're not the center of the universe, but like her I've found that even one night under the humbling desert stars can bring your life a startling new perspective. You may feel small and insignificant, but so do all your worries. And the land can bless you with more valuable gifts than self-esteem: "For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars."

Photograph (Book jacket; THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN by Mary Austin)