Land Acknowledgment: Payahuunadu has been, and continues to be, the homeland of the Paiute (Nuumu), Shoshone (Newe), and Timbisha peoples. This land acknowledgment honors the original inhabitants of the Eastern Sierra and the tribes who remain here today.
Before your favorite influencers started preaching about desert solitude and finding themselves in nature, Mary Austin was out here actually doing it—alone, in the wild, and with zero patience for society’s nonsense. A writer, feminist, and total bada*ss, Mary Austin was decades ahead of her time, turning the harsh beauty of the Eastern Sierra into some of the most poetic, gut-punching prose you’ll ever read.
Her book The Land of Little Rain (1903) isn’t just a love letter to the Owens Valley—it’s a sharp, clear-eyed tribute to the kind of landscape that breaks the weak and rewards only those who respect it.
Literary Rebel
Born in Illinois in 1868, Mary Austin wasn’t exactly set up for a quiet, conventional life. After her father died when she was a kid, her mother packed up and moved the family out West, landing in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It didn’t take long for Austin to figure out that small-town domestic life wasn’t for her. Instead, she set her sights on the brutal, beautiful Owens Valley, where she lived for years—alone, broke, and completely absorbed by the land.
While most of the men around her were busy trying to conquer the West, Austin was writing about what it meant to actually exist in it. She immersed herself in Indigenous knowledge, studying the ways Paiute and Shoshone people survived in the desert long before settlers showed up to ruin everything. Her work wasn’t just about the land—it was about the people who truly understood it.
And she did all this as a woman in the early 1900s, when the world expected her to be more worried about a husband than water rights. (Spoiler: she was not worried about a husband.)
Owens Valley’s Fiercest Advocate
If Mary Austin were alive today, she’d be leading the fight against every bad water deal draining the Owens Valley dry. Long before most people even considered conservation a thing, Austin was railing against the Los Angeles water grab that turned Owens Lake into a dustbowl and left an entire valley gasping for air. She saw exactly what was coming—big cities taking what they wanted, leaving local communities and the land to suffer—and she wrote about it. Loudly.
But, of course, no one listened. LA got its water, the Owens Valley got screwed, and Mary Austin kept calling it like she saw it. If you think activists today are relentless, Austin was out there doing it with zero funding, no internet, and only the sheer force of her writing to get people to care.
She Wasn’t Just a Nature Writer—She Was a Force of Nature
Sure, The Land of Little Rain is considered a classic, but Austin didn’t stop there. She wrote novels, plays, and essays that took aim at everything from colonialism to gender roles. She traveled the world, rubbed elbows with literary giants like Jack London and Upton Sinclair, and still stayed fiercely independent.
She refused to be defined by marriage (her own was miserable, and she basically ditched it), and she never softened her views to make them more palatable. Even as other writers from her era faded into obscurity, her work still feels radical, raw, and relevant.
Why She Still Matters
Mary Austin wasn’t just ahead of her time—she was in an entirely different league. She understood that landscapes aren’t just backdrops for adventure; they shape people, histories, and entire cultures. She championed Indigenous knowledge when most writers ignored it. And she saw environmental destruction coming long before most people even considered it a problem.
If you haven’t read The Land of Little Rain (read or listen, here), fix that. It’s not just another dusty old book—it’s a survival guide, a warning, and a love letter to the kind of wilderness that doesn’t care if you’re ready for it or not.
And if Mary Austin were still around today? She’d be standing in the middle of the Owens Valley, pointing at LA, and saying, I told you so.
