Country of Lost Borders is the name Mary Austin preferred for the desert. She wrote that she learned that expression from “Indians.” They may have been Mojave or Shoshone or Ute or Paiute.

She never said exactly what that expression meant to her.

She did say that the desert begins with creosote. Maybe that is a clue to what the expression lost borders meant to her. The creosote bush can live for thousands of years. It may be immortal.

“The desert air breeds fables,” she wrote in 1903, “chiefly of lost treasure.” In one sense she meant that quite literally of the tales miners told in her day. In another sense, perhaps she meant the tales that all of us tell in the land of lost borders, in southern California, about treasures lost and treasures sought. And she wrote this:

“For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.”

It does. These are the treasures the desert offers – not gold. These are the lost treasures, treasures sought in the modern age – these and immortality, of course. Treasure it would be to adapt like the creosote, to lose the border of life that we cross at death.

In another sentence she remembered that the Chaldeans were bred in the desert. From Ur in the land of the Chaldeans, Abraham started his journey towards Canaan, the promised land. Some years later as the sun went down a deep sleep fell upon Abraham and in a vision of the night the covenant was made.

God told Abraham to look toward heaven and count the stars. Mary Austin must have remembered this too when she wrote that the desert’s compensations include communion with the stars.

It comes down to this: the desert’s compensations are greater than its toll and, for those who know the old stories, the hope inspired by the vision of Abraham is refreshed in the desert.