For this inaugural volume of the ESHJ, editor Char Miller discusses the formative role that writer Mary Austin (1868-1934) has had in identifying many of the Eastern Sierra\u27s key features, natural and human. This new journal hopes to add to the intellectual work that she launched, serving as a window into this complex, fascinating, and contested region

Miller, Char

English

Scholarship@Claremont

Eastern Sierra History Journal Volume 1 Article 9 2020 Making the Past Present: Editor's Note Char Miller Pomona College, char.miller@pomona.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj  Part of the Geography Commons, History Commons, and the Indigenous Studies Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Char (2020) "Making the Past Present: Editor's Note," Eastern Sierra History Journal: Vol. 1, Article 9. Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9 This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Eastern Sierra History Journal by an authorized editor of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact scholarship@cuc.claremont.edu. Making the Past Present: Editor's Note Cover Page Footnote Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. Among his recent books are Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents, Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena, and Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream. This front matter is available in Eastern Sierra History Journal: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9 Making the Past Present Char Miller  Mary Austin was not the first to try to identify the geographical contours of what we call the Eastern Sierra. In the first words of her iconic book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), she credits the Indigenous nations with the best framing of these arid lands, their extent, reach, and mystery: “The Country of Lost Borders.” That was considerably more precise than the English word desert, she writes, for “desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man.” However “dry the air and villainous the soil,” the Eastern Sierra was never “void of life.”1 Through her extraordinary use of language, Austin animated the region, capturing its vital beauty, its unsettling energy. “There are hills, rounded, blunt, flat, burned, squeezed out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snow-line.” Out beyond this rolling terrain lie high level-looking plains of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze.” Seasonal variation in this “country of three seasons” is almost beyond imaginging: “From June on to November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms.” In winter to April, it is “chill, quiescent, drinking its cant rain and scanter snows.” From then until June, the land is “blooming, radiant, and seductive.” A “land of lost rivers, with little in it to love,” but love it Austin does (and countless others since), for “once visited must be come back to inevitably. If it were not so,” she confided, “there would be little told of it.”2 Actually, very little of the region’s complex history has been told (and none written with Austin’s penetrating insights and energetic prose!). Of all of the regions in California, it remains the most underappreciated and underwritten. Distant from the state’s centers of power—political (Sacramento) and urban (Southern California and the Bay Area)—the Eastern Sierra as Austin understood more than a century ago was distinct, a place apart. One way to visualize its remote and elusive appeal is through a camera’s lens, as the evocative prints of such artists as Ansel Adams and Galen and Barbara Rowell suggest. But even their sharp focus and stark images are not sufficient to the whole task. A modest attempt to fill some of that gap is what led the Eastern Sierra Interpretative Association (ESIA) and the Claremont Colleges Library’s Digital Scholarship program to collaborate in the production of the Eastern Sierra History Journal. I have the good fortune to be its inaugural editor.  The journal’s geographical parameters range from the Sierra’s eastern slope to the eastern California deserts; its north-south spine is essentially US 395. Among possible subjects the journal explores are the region’s complicated Indigenous histories and the contemporary issues impacting tribal life; colonization, Japanese-American internment at Manzanar, as well as agricultural and industrial development from the nineteenth century to the present. Other enduring themes include public-lands management, water quality and quantity, biodiversity and endangered species, as well as recreation, tourism, and population growth. And everything else. The of the ESHJ is just as expansive: to encourage historians, writers, scientists, and critics to unearth the region’s complicated past by sifting through its oral histories and traditions, literature  1 Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain (New York NY: Penguin Books, 1997), 1. 2 Ibid., 2. 1Miller: Making the Past Present: Editor's Noteand poetry, photography, film, and biography, as well as its material culture. And then—here’s the tricky part—to tell the stories and craft the narratives, whether debated or contested, happy or heuristic, that are embedded within these differing forms of evidence. Apparently, that’s not asking too much, because that’s exactly what the contributors to the first volume of the Eastern Sierra History Journal have achieved. Selected from past presentations to the Eastern Sierra History Conference, this first volume features articles that explore how the Eastern Sierra was surveyed and mapped; that weave together words and photographs to examine one family’s fascination with high country and valley floor; that offer a close and interior reading of the Paiute worldview, then and now; that dig into an unusual moment when US Army generals in the midst of World War II went fishing in alpine lakes; that clarify the enduring significance of the Yosemite Grant that later gave rise to a national park; and that reveal the manifold meanings contained in the arborglyphs, tree-carvings, that shepherds left behind. Two shorter essays, first published in the Inyo Register in advance of the 2019 history conference, round out the volume. Whatever their length and regardless of topic, what these essays demonstrate, individually and collectively, is the array of creative responses to and imaginative possibilities that lie within the histories of the Eastern Sierra. Mary Austin would not be surprised, knowing as she did the arid region’s enigmatic presence and magnetic attraction. “None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous radiance of the spring, have the lotus charm. They trick the sense of time, so that once inhabiting there you always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done.”  The region’s hold on our imagination, like that of the past itself, is sticky.3  --30— Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. Among his recent books are Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents, Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena, and Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream.  3 Ibid. 6.  2Eastern Sierra History Journal, Vol. 1 [2020], Art. 9https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9

Making the Past Present: Editor\u27s Note

Keck Graduate Institute

Eastern Sierra History Journal 
Volume 1 Article 9 
2020 
Making the Past Present: Editor's Note 
Char Miller 
Pomona College, char.miller@pomona.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj 
 Part of the Geography Commons, History Commons, and the Indigenous Studies Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Miller, Char (2020) "Making the Past Present: Editor's Note," Eastern Sierra History Journal: Vol. 1, Article 
9. 
Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9 
This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Eastern Sierra History Journal by an authorized editor of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more 
information, please contact scholarship@cuc.claremont.edu. 
Making the Past Present: Editor's Note 
Cover Page Footnote 
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. Among 
his recent books are Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents, Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena, 
and Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream. 
This front matter is available in Eastern Sierra History Journal: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9 
Making the Past Present 
Char Miller 
 
Mary Austin was not the first to try to identify the geographical contours of what we call the 
Eastern Sierra. In the first words of her iconic book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), she credits 
the Indigenous nations with the best framing of these arid lands, their extent, reach, and mystery: 
“The Country of Lost Borders.” That was considerably more precise than the English word 
desert, she writes, for “desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man.” However 
“dry the air and villainous the soil,” the Eastern Sierra was never “void of life.”1 
Through her extraordinary use of language, Austin animated the region, capturing its vital 
beauty, its unsettling energy. “There are hills, rounded, blunt, flat, burned, squeezed out of chaos, 
chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snow-line.” Out beyond this rolling terrain lie high 
level-looking plains of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze.” Seasonal 
variation in this “country of three seasons” is almost beyond imaginging: “From June on to 
November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms.” In winter to 
April, it is “chill, quiescent, drinking its cant rain and scanter snows.” From then until June, the 
land is “blooming, radiant, and seductive.” A “land of lost rivers, with little in it to love,” but 
love it Austin does (and countless others since), for “once visited must be come back to 
inevitably. If it were not so,” she confided, “there would be little told of it.”2 
Actually, very little of the region’s complex history has been told (and none written with 
Austin’s penetrating insights and energetic prose!). Of all of the regions in California, it remains 
the most underappreciated and underwritten. Distant from the state’s centers of power—political 
(Sacramento) and urban (Southern California and the Bay Area)—the Eastern Sierra as Austin 
understood more than a century ago was distinct, a place apart. 
One way to visualize its remote and elusive appeal is through a camera’s lens, as the evocative 
prints of such artists as Ansel Adams and Galen and Barbara Rowell suggest. But even their 
sharp focus and stark images are not sufficient to the whole task. A modest attempt to fill some 
of that gap is what led the Eastern Sierra Interpretative Association (ESIA) and the Claremont 
Colleges Library’s Digital Scholarship program to collaborate in the production of the Eastern 
Sierra History Journal. I have the good fortune to be its inaugural editor.  
The journal’s geographical parameters range from the Sierra’s eastern slope to the eastern 
California deserts; its north-south spine is essentially US 395. Among possible subjects the 
journal explores are the region’s complicated Indigenous histories and the contemporary issues 
impacting tribal life; colonization, Japanese-American internment at Manzanar, as well as 
agricultural and industrial development from the nineteenth century to the present. Other 
enduring themes include public-lands management, water quality and quantity, biodiversity and 
endangered species, as well as recreation, tourism, and population growth. And everything else. 
The of the ESHJ is just as expansive: to encourage historians, writers, scientists, and critics to 
unearth the region’s complicated past by sifting through its oral histories and traditions, literature 
 
1 Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain (New York NY: Penguin Books, 1997), 1. 
2 Ibid., 2. 
1
Miller: Making the Past Present: Editor's Note
and poetry, photography, film, and biography, as well as its material culture. And then—here’s 
the tricky part—to tell the stories and craft the narratives, whether debated or contested, happy or 
heuristic, that are embedded within these differing forms of evidence. 
Apparently, that’s not asking too much, because that’s exactly what the contributors to the first 
volume of the Eastern Sierra History Journal have achieved. Selected from past presentations to 
the Eastern Sierra History Conference, this first volume features articles that explore how the 
Eastern Sierra was surveyed and mapped; that weave together words and photographs to 
examine one family’s fascination with high country and valley floor; that offer a close and 
interior reading of the Paiute worldview, then and now; that dig into an unusual moment when 
US Army generals in the midst of World War II went fishing in alpine lakes; that clarify the 
enduring significance of the Yosemite Grant that later gave rise to a national park; and that 
reveal the manifold meanings contained in the arborglyphs, tree-carvings, that shepherds left 
behind. Two shorter essays, first published in the Inyo Register in advance of the 2019 history 
conference, round out the volume. 
Whatever their length and regardless of topic, what these essays demonstrate, individually and 
collectively, is the array of creative responses to and imaginative possibilities that lie within the 
histories of the Eastern Sierra. Mary Austin would not be surprised, knowing as she did the arid 
region’s enigmatic presence and magnetic attraction. “None other than this long brown land lays 
such a hold on the affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous radiance of 
the spring, have the lotus charm. They trick the sense of time, so that once inhabiting there you 
always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done.”  
The region’s hold on our imagination, like that of the past itself, is sticky.3 
 
--30— 
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona 
College. Among his recent books are Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents, Theodore 
Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena, and Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California 
Dream. 
 
3 Ibid. 6.  
2
Eastern Sierra History Journal, Vol. 1 [2020], Art. 9
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/eshj/vol1/iss1/9


https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&amp;context=eshj

Making the Past Present: Editor\u27s Note

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Scholarship@Claremont

Keck Graduate Institute