Mary Austin on wild deserts

    Of the worth of wild deserts, Mary Austin wrote:

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. It comes upon one with new force in the pauses of the night that the Chaldeans were a desert-bred people. It is hard to escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the wide clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. They look large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on some stately service not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations in the sky they make the poor world-fret of no account. Of no account you lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from you and howls and howls.

    (Quoted from “A Land of Little Rain,” by Mary Austin. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 91, 1903, page 99.)
    For a brief biography of Mary Hunter Austin, click here. For images of or relating to Mary Hunter Austin, click here.
    For a brief history of the Chaldeans, click here.