"The Secret of the Tulares"

In the passages on pp. 91-3, Mary Austin offers what seems to be a description of an almost primordial nature--a fetid, boggy area where "little grows" and where Austin has "meant to explore" but has "never done so."  Stylistically, the conclusion of the chapter seems to mark the edge of human inhabitability and, thus, the limits of Austin's knowledge. 

Or maybe not.  For Austin then describes the place as teeming with life, and she is quite well informed about these mysterious and malignant areas.  She tells us about a flower, the heliotrope, growing amidst this "evil-smelling" place which actually has medicinal properties.  The "poisonous-looking" tules or reeds, which are "inconceivably thick" and impenetrable, actually offers a habitat to redwinged blackbirds, blue heron, mallards, crane, and geese (92).

Read closely, though, it turns out (unless I'm way off base here) that the passage only stages these birds' presence and that Austin is performing an imaginative leap into the "happy mystery" of this unexplored area.  That is, the sounds of these water fowl nesting in the tulares are not actually to be heard.  Rather, "you would think to hear" them (92).  Moreover, the last line, landing emphatically on "the secret of the tulares," suggests that Austin has not not penetrated this secret but has attempted to convey imaginatively that which could lie beyond her empirical knowledge.

Mating Season

 Like Mary and Brooke, I was immediately struck by the trail of poison trickling through this section of The Land of Little Rain.  I was affectively disarmed from the start, gaping at the kind of nature that lurks in the margins, “along the desert edges of the West” (91).  This kind of nature does not invite, nor is it romanticized.  Nature that smells like “old blood” and stems from “clumps of rotting willows” (92) is not inspirational, such as it can be in Walden, or beautiful, as is the plant life in Canadian Wild Flowers.  Austin’s constant characterizing of this area as forbidding, ugly, even hostile, renders her conclusion perplexing.  She tells us the tulares are mysterious, happily so, and they are mysterious in a way that attracts our attention, though not strongly enough for us to disregard the “malaria” seething in its “dingy pools” (92).  So why does Austin follow up this treatise on a sickly and sickening environment with a gesture toward this same environment’s allure?

To address this shift in perspective, we must tend to the relationship between Austin and her readers.  As we noted in class, Austin initially offers herself as a guide to the territory, but as the text progresses, her role becomes less defined and more eerily ubiquitous.  As this transition occurs, the reader’s role is also transformed, from naïve explorer to hopeless outsider.  Jessica observed that Austin never makes the strange familiar.  Over time, then, the foreign reader becomes estranged – fictional, even.

In the portion about the tulares, this fictionalized reader is bombarded by images of grotesque, uninhabitable nature, but hidden among this rhetorical filth is a gem of a fact, untouched by the disgusted reader: Austin’s framework for this snapshot is “mating weather” (92).  All around are thus the sounds of life.  Austin attempts to alienate her readers from this landscape only to glorify it under the mystifying promise of newness.  This promise, however, is only available to that tireless brand of reader, the one who courageously accepts the tulares’ poisonous qualities in order to revel in the breath of life waiting to be appreciated.  So though the reader remains on the outskirts, so, too, does Austin, who creates a sort of communion of understanding with this diligent reader.  Both dared to dredge into the slime and rot to uncover the existence of a mystery “happy” in its secret, and both will resignify poison as birth.

Austin, Mary.  The Land of Little Rain.  1903.  Introd. Robert Hass.  New York, NY: Modern Library, 2003.

The tulares are full of mystery and malaria. That is why we have meant to explore them and have never done so. It must be a happy mystery. So you would think to hear the redwinged blackbirds proclaim it clear March mornings. Flocks of them, and every flock a myriad, shelter in the dry whispering stems.  

As other posts have already mentioned, Austin is interested in the warped and ironic fecundity of the bed (or “border”) of the irrigating ditch. It is difficult to get to know the ditch itself— the history of its “appropriated waters” have been erased, and therefore, we will never know the irrigating ditch as it was “when it was a brook”— we will not ever live by the “morning and evening tones” of its “rising and falling” waters (123).   Instead, we get to know the ditch by proxy, in a way, via the ditch’s “border” (which, in turn, we cannot fully know but instead get a glimpse of through Austin’s species descriptions, which are at once attentive but also hesitant). I think it would be useful to bring Brooke’s earlier idea about the “thirst for narrative plot” into the discussion of this chapter. Austin replaces the “true” history of the “appropriated waters” with an equally true, though temporally divergent (or, perhaps, simply future) narrative: the “story” of the weeds, shrubs, willows, and reeds that grow near the ditch, stealing and sucking up the already “stolen” water—deviant, somewhat sickly, but admirably persistent in their life and creation of habitats for new sorts of visitors (like the wild fowl in the chapter’s final paragraph).

We do not know the bed completely, however; its tulares are “full of mystery and malaria,” Austin writes (129). My final comment has to do with the religious undertones that Mary brought up in class on Wednesday. The phrase “It must be a happy mystery” is striking to me (especially paired next to “the redwinged blackbirds proclaim it”), and I can’t figure out its meaning. I am convinced it’s a reference to the joyful or glorious mysteries of the rosary, which involve prayers of humility and faith, and I’m trying to figure out what this has to do with the bed of the irrigating ditch.  I’m thinking that Austin observes (or at least believes in) something divine about the life that survives in the ostensibly “sick” irrigation ditch—though I think it is important to note that the “malaria,” at least, is borne by human  visitation to the creekbed (I’m assuming the fauna hosted large clouds of mosquitoes?). In this way, the mystery and malaria of the last paragraphs are twinned; in order for our own survival, we must be content with not knowing first-hand what’s in the tulares reeds. In this context, I wonder how we might think of Austin’s entire text as either a prayer or some other sort of religiously-oriented didactic text…is she writing to keep us away from the American West—to give us enough to be satisfied with not knowing? 

(Note: my page numbers correspond to the Rutgers edition.)

What do the “clanging geese” go over?:  Toxic Semiotic Mystery in Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain

These final paragraphs of Mary Austin’s “Other Water Borders” chapter in The Land of Little Rain contrast significantly with  the immediately previous ones in which she describes the beauties of the spring mesa landscape.  For example, she describes the iris that is native to the mesa meadows in these glorifying terms:

“Native to the mesa meadows is a pale iris, gardens of it acres wide, that in the spring season of full bloom make an airy fluttering as of azure wings.  Single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the imagination, but the full fields have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation of things ethereal” (91).

Then with no immediately discernible foreshadowing, she abruptly introduces her readers to a landscape whose characteristics contrast starkly with the springtime beauties of the mesas—one that is, in fact, a contaminated repository of toxins and diseases (e.g. “alkali-collecting pools,” “leakage from canals,” “sickly slow streams,” “dingy pools,” “rotting willows,” 92).   

This diseased landscape is actually a locus of ambivalence for Austin.  On the one hand, its toxic aspect generates revulsion, but on the extreme other, its latent healing components constitute its “mystery.”  Specifically, she describes the heliotropes who manage to thrive in this toxic environment as capable of producing a “mucilaginous sap [that] has healing powers” (92). 

Thus while Austin’s sentence constructions replicate the slow oozing movements of the “sickly” streams (i.e. series of short clauses separated by semicolons:  “old stalks succumb slowly;”) her syntax becomes increasingly open-ended with descriptive progression.  For example, what do the “clanging geese” go over?  At the same time, “…how fare, what find” omits the [already] ambiguous pronoun.  Indeed, what is the referent for “those” that “the reedy fens have swallowed up”?  In other words, what is the referent for that which is unknowable and thus indescribable—that eludes language, or signification—that gets “swallowed up” in semiotic mystery? 

In sum, the [uneasy] coexistence of the healing and the toxic aspects of nature can generate in the reader an ambivalence that is paradoxically communicated through increasing syntactical omissions.  These omissions, in turn, form the poststructuralist core of a lyricism that signifies the impenetrable “secret of the tulanes” (93).     

"Sickly" nature

Like Brooke, I was very much struck in this section by the repeated characterization of nature (in Brooke’s post, specifically water) as poisonous to humans.  This is a theme repeated with a difference from Traill’s work, as Traill is concerned with the healing or poisonous properties of plants.  In our discussion of Traill, we talked about how she (mainly) characterizes plants as curative and humans as sickly.  I think Austin does something different here, as she describes a “sickly” nature.

Austin suggests repeatedly that nature itself is sick, in ways that blur the difference between the human body and the natural world.  She uses the word “sickly” twice, describing both earth (“soil sickly with alkali-collecting pools”) and water (“sickly, slow streams”) (92).  Less obvious word choices also serve to characterize nature as sickly.  She refers, for instance, to “wastes” of reeds.  “Wastes” can be read as a geographic term signifying an empty expanse (Melville uses it to describe the ocean, for instance), but also suggests the “wasting away” characteristic of tuberculosis.  In the same vein, she repeats imagery of being bleached – a “faded white” heliotrope and “ghostly pale” reeds – creating the image of a nature which has wasted like an invalid’s face.  She describes stalks as “succumb[ing],” as after a long illness, says pools of water are “evil-smelling like old blood,” and describes the “leakage” from canals – the water, here, is like the pus from an infected wound (92).

This view of a sick nature is one which is decidedly less useful to humans than those articulated by Audubon, Cooper, Traill, Melville, etc.  These authors all depict a nature which is in some way harvestable by humans: Audubon and Melville both describe the “harvesting” of animals, while Cooper and Traill “glean” nature for plant specimens.  The nature depicted by Austin in this passage (with the exception of the healing heliotrope) is decidedly un-harvestable.  It is, rather, a nature which is sick, and capable of making humans who wish to better understand it sick (malaria could be the consequence of exploring the tulares, for instance.) 

The question is, what made nature sick?  If this is a proto-environmentalist text, then the answer seems to be the poisonous run-off from agriculture in the West (and Brooke’s reading of water as pharmakon supports this.)  But could there be other causes for nature’s sickness, or could sickness be the natural state of the “land of little rain”?

Perhaps unconnectedly, I think the point Sam made in class about Austin’s opaque style is suggestive here.  Nature is sick, and Austin’s difficult sentences are a diagnosis painfully described.  Unlike Cooper, though, or Traill (to some extent), we don’t see long moralistic asides about the ideal human relationship to the environment in Austin’s work.  Rather, Austin seems content to diagnose nature as sickly and refrains from recommending a cure – perhaps indicative of her overall attitude toward human-environment interactions.

Water as Remedy and Poison

The theme of poison in nineteenth century nature writing has come up in class discussion several times over the course of the semester, specifically with Rural Hours and Canadian Wild Flowers. A twist on the same theme can be found in The Land of Little Rain, but Austin writes about poisonous water instead of poisonous plants. Poisonous water first appears in the very beginning of “Water Trails of the Ceriso,” which is a section about the trails animals make in their endless pilgrimage to spots of drinkable water, the highest commodity in the desert:

There is little water in the Ceriso at the best of times, and that little brackish and smelling vilely, but by a lone juniper where the rim of the Ceriso breaks away to the lower country, there is a perpetual rill of fresh sweet drink in the midst of lush grass and watercress. (Austin 12)

Another example of poisonous water occurs in the passage we were asked to write about in “Other Water Borders,” which focuses on how water runoff from neighboring mountains affects both wild and cultivated plants in the desert:

In all the valleys and along the desert edges of the West are considerable areas of soil sickly with alkali-collecting pools, black and evil-smelling like old blood. Very little grows hereabouts but thick-leaved pickle weed. Curiously enough, in the stiff mud, along roadways where there is frequently a little leakage from canals, grows the only western representative of the true heliotropes…After so much schooling in the virtues of water-seeking plants, one is not surprised to learn that its mucilaginous sap has healing powers. (91-92)

These two depictions of nature and water are certainly far from romantic, but I find them extremely interesting because both examples conflate remedy (water) with poison. In the first selection, Austin emphasizes the fact that there is a limited supply of water in the Ceriso, but that the majority of the accessible water is undrinkable. However, one can find healthy water that will nourish the body if one only knows where to look by following the growth of grass and watercress. In the second selection, the poisonous water is characterized as stagnant water that collects minerals that makes the water not only unhealthy to consume, but absolutely fetid and repulsive. This implies a paradox—that which one searches to find also repels. Within the same paragraph, Austin turns from the poisonous water to the contrasting healing powers of the heliotropes that find adequate places to grow in such a hostile environment.

So, my question is: what do we make of this theme? What purpose does the notion of naturally occurring poisons (specifically poisons that harm the human body) hold in nature writing? This question immediately reminded me of the paradox in Plato’s work called “pharmakon,” which can be translated as “drug that is both remedy and poison.” I know that Plato discusses the concept of “pharmakon” in his “Phaedrus” and Derrida explores Plato’s treatment of the word in “Plato’s Pharmacy.” I see a similarity in the way in which Plato discusses “pharmakon” and the way in which Austin presents water in The Land of Little Rain. The desert is a paradoxical environment where things that are absolutely necessary for life, such as water, are not readily available to human consumption and where water is available, it can become poison to the human body.

I think in Austin’s case, the theme of poisonous water as both remedy and poison underscores the larger moral argument of the book—that nature is bigger than humankind. Austin appears to argue that nature is not made for the sole purpose of human consumption because there are many examples, such as the scarcity of drinkable water in the desert, where humans must adapt to their environment. In order for humans to live in nature they must live in a symbiotic relationship by taking the example of the desert plants and animals. Austin continually points out that strangers in the desert are not well suited for survival. For example, early on in the book she says, “man-height is the least fortunate of all heights from which to study trails” (10). The point is that Austin advocates a certain way of seeing—an animal or plant perspective—that enables humans to better discern remedy from poison.

Mysterious Ambivalence in "The Land of Little Rain"

Re: pp.91-93 in Austin's The Land of Little Rain...

In this passage I see Austin participating in some of the same exploratory concerns – the same uncomfortableness with terra incognita – as many of the other North American nature writers we have read (particularly Thoreau and Traill). Austin shares these writers' ambivalence about nature’s remaining mysteries. I’m thinking in particular about the mythological bottom (or bottomlessness) of Walden Pond, which both bothers and attracts Thoreau in the same way that flowers blooming unseen seems to unsettle Traill.

On the one hand, for instance, Austin displays resistance to the idea of nature unfolding in the absence of the human gaze: she is driven to conjecture about the nature of the mysterious tulares (“It must be a happy mystery” based on the song of the birds [92]) and overtly confesses that she “ wishes for…nearer speech from those the reedy fens have swallowed up” (93). I also detect anxiety accumulating along with the birds within the reeds; the gathering cacophony (from the specificity of “redwinged blackbirds” and “the great blue heron” to “quacking hoards” of “strange and far-flown fowl” [92]) evokes the idea of a sort of conspiratorial natural convention – one from which humans are excluded, driving a frustrating partition between man and nature.

On the other hand, Austin seems to embrace this mystery. The gorgeous lyricism of this passage, for example, elevates the secrets of the fens to matters worthy of poetic representation. Further, note the strangeness of this observation: “The tulares are full of mystery and malaria. That is why we have meant to explore them and have never done so” (92). One is tempted (perhaps even encouraged) to gloss over this assertion with an assumption – surely Austin means to attribute the wish to explore to the “mystery,” and the non-exploration to the “malaria”? – and yet the structure of the sentence is ambiguous. In one possible reading, the “mystery” itself plays an equal part in her resistance to explore. This makes some sense – mystery might imply danger, and therefore augment resistance – but then the word “explore” necessitates mystery; one cannot “explore” what is not unknown. So does Austin suggest that people have not explored the tulares precisely because they are unexplored? Because the mystery itself is worth preserving? 

This also puts me in mind of Thoreau’s encounter with the loon; he revels in its mystery even as he wishes to find it out. It seems that Austin shares a similar attitude toward these fens; she aims to glorify and preserve “the secret of the tulares” (93), even as she is driven to demonstrate a sort of knowledge about it.

- Sam

PS: On page 92, Austin asserts: “The tules grow inconceivably thick…cattle, no, not any fish nor fowl can penetrate them,” but then she describes them in terms of the birds that inhabit them. What is that about? Am I missing something, or did this trip anybody else up?