But Mary Austin's primary importance is not as a theorist.
Her spiritual depth is greater than her intellectual. She is a
translator of nature through concrete observations. She interprets
through character sketches, folk tales, novels. "Anybody
can write facts about a country," she said. She infuses
fact with understanding and imagination. In _Lost Borders_,
_The Land of Little Rain_, _The Land of Journey's Ending_, and
_The Flock_ the land itself often seems to speak, but often she
gets in its way. She sees "with an eye made quiet by the power
of harmony." _Earth Horizons_, a stubborn book, is Mary
Austin's inner autobiography. _The Beloved House_, by T. M.
Pearce (Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1940), is an understanding
biography.
Joseph Wood Krutch of Columbia University spent a
year in Arizona, near Tucson. Instead of talking about his
_The Desert Year_ (Sloane, New York, 1952), I quote a
representative paragraph:
In New England the struggle for existence is visibly the struggle of
plant with plant, each battling his neighbor for sunlight and for the
spot of ground which, so far as moisture and nourishment are concerned,
would support them all.
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