Mary Austin was an early ecologist, feminist, and desert dweller. The Land of Little Rain is a book about earth, sky, weather, and some of the plants and animals that survive and reproduce among those elemental and elementary events, She describes a few of the people who once lived in what was something close to an original state of nature. The Table on Contents includes The land of little rain. -- Water trails of the Ceriso. -- The scavengers. -- The pocket hunter. - Shoshone land. -- Jimville, a Bret Harte town. -- My neighbor's field. -- The mesa trail. -- The basket maker. -- The streets...

Mary Austin was an early ecologist, feminist, and desert dweller. Her family moved to California in 1888 and established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley. Her first play, The Arrowmaker, about Indian life, was produced at the New Theatre, (New York) in 1911. First published in 1918, The Trail Book is now considered a classic of American nature writing. Set in a New York museum, the exhibits come to life for two children. They enter the exhibits and have many adventures. The children discover the ways of the ancient Native Americans and the natural worlds they inhabited, as well as the...