CHAPTER 2: SEARCH AND RESCUE
With a population of about twelve thousand, sprawl and alll…
This population estimate for Bishop and adjacent unincorporated communities was compiled by the author from the most recent census data available as of December 2019.
…a county larger than New Jersey.
…martian landscapes, mines, abandoned cemeteries.
Atlas Obscura. “10 Cool and Unusual Things to Do in Inyo County.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 17 July 2015, http://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/inyo-county-california.
…hunks of igneous rock called Bishop Tuff, sooty with desert varnish…
“Bishop Tuff in Long Valley Caldera, California.” Volcano Hazards Program CalVO Long Valley Caldera, United States Geological Survey, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/long_valley/long_valley_geo_hist_64.html
…spoke a dialect used nowhere else in the country.
Atleework, Kendra, and Harry C Williams. “Paiute History Talks with Community Historian,” multiple conversations, 2017-2019
They called Mount Tom “Winuba.”
ibid.
The movement of centuries and drought and an aqueduct running 380 miles…
Original aqueduct was 233 miles long: Standiford, Les. Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles. Ecco, 2016, p. 25
150 miles added (beginning at the Mono Basin) in the 1930s:
“The L.A. Aqueduct at 100.” Los Angeles Times, 5 Nov. 2013, http://graphics.latimes.com/me-aqueduct/
Was it an interview for the teaching job open in Lee Vining, a town of three hundred…
The population of Lee Vining was 317 in 1980 and 381 in 1985.
Martin, Dennis W, and Bill Bramlette. Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Comprehensive Management Plan. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, 1989, p.135
…with a high school of thirty…
Heather Lee from the Lee Vining High School gave the author this information from the school archives.
Lee Vining High School enrolled students: 1980: 47, 1981: 43, 1983: 32, 1983: 32, 1984: 31, 1985:35, 1986: 34
Did she imagine the batholith fractured by fault lines, Earth’s crust separating, dropping into valleys…
“Horst and Graben.” Earthquake Hazards, United States Geological Survey , https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/animations/horstandgraben.php
Hill, David P., et al. “Living With a Restless Caldera, Long Valley, California, Volcano Fact Sheet.” Living With a Restless Caldera, Long Valley, California, Volcano Fact Sheet, USGS , May 2000, https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs108-96/
“…home, there, where I was from, me, California.”
Didion, Joan. Where I Was From. Harper Perennial, 2004, p.204
…the shade used by the Western Regional Climate Center to indicate zero to ten annual average inches of precipitation.
“PRISM Precipitation Maps: 1961-90.” WRCC, Western Regional Climate Center, https://wrcc.dri.edu/Climate/precip_map_show.php?simg=ca.gif
…expanse that includes parts of California, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and most of Nevada.
“Deserts: Great Basin Desert.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, updated 10 Oct. 2019, https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/nature/deserts.htm
“…told me that I would be all right.”
Steward, Julian H. “Autobiography of Two Owens Valley Paiutes.” University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnography , vol. 33, no. 5, 3 Feb. 1934, pp. 423–438, https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/ucp033-006.pdf
“…sometimes cursed as they curse the beauty of women.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon: Facsimile of Original 1932 Edition. Sunstone Press, 2007, p.253
…then followed her husband to the Eastern Sierra and took a teaching job.
ibid. p.264
…in her little brown house beneath willows, she wrote The Land of Little Rain.
ibid. p. 296
…died two months later from a diphtheria infection Mary had brought home.
Goodman, Susan, and Carl Dawson. Mary Austin and the American West. University of California Press, 2009, p.5
She read as she drank water, as she breathed.
Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon: Facsimile of Original 1932 Edition. Sunstone Press, 2007
“Her mind was somewhere else all the time.”
These quotations all from oral histories. Transcripts provided to the author by the Eastern California Museum in Independence, CA:
Mrs. Lula McLaren Cox, interviewed by Lindley Bynum in Bishop, December 8, 1952
Miss Harriett B. Bulpitt, interviewed by Linley Bynum, in Bishop, February 5, 1954
Mrs. Mamie Clark, interviewed by Linley Bynum, presumed early 1950s
“They would have to be spry about it or Mary would end by telling them.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon: Facsimile of Original 1932 Edition. Sunstone Press, 2007, p.113
…her insistence on closely reading scripture without the approval of the pastor.
Lanigan, Esther F. Mary Austin: Song of a Maverick. University of Arizona Press, 1997, p.70
Disinvited by the Methodists…
ibid. p.70
…she befriended Nuumu healers.
Austin references her friendships with Paiute healers in multiple books.
…“the courage to sheer off what is not worthwhile.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. The Land of Little Rain. Modern Library, 2003, p.47
“…I have never wanted one badly enough to work that out.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. Can Prayer Be Answered? Farrar & Rinehart, 1934, p. 47
…spoken only by animals.
All Mary Austin facts this paragraph:
Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon: Facsimile of Original 1932 Edition. Sunstone Press, 2007
“…mysterious trepidation going on in all the upper rooms of the trees.”
ibid. p. 74
“And inside her, I-Mary, looking on.”
ibid. pp. 46-47
“…beauty-in-the-wild, yearning to be made human.”
ibid. p. 187
“…a lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful, terrible.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. The Land of Little Rain. Modern Library, 2003, p. 27
“…in which they might come to terms.”
Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon: Facsimile of Original 1932 Edition. Sunstone Press, 2007, p.187
…and gorge themselves on the eggs of California gulls.
Sahagun, Louis. “Mono Lake’s Ecological Crisis Is a Blow to Wildlife, L.A. Water Supply.” (interview with
Kristie Nelson, Mono Lake California Gull Project Manager.) Los Angeles Times, 24 June 2015, https://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-mono-drought-20150625-story.html