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Josephine Clifford McCrackin (1839-1920) http://tinyurl.com/McCrackin

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The Valley Still Verdant

From "La Graciosa," 1877.

Reader: Jessica Teeter

"I claim to have done more for the preservation of the Redwoods of California, for the conservation of birds and game, than any Native of California," or so claimed Prussian born author, Josephine Clifford McCrackin.

In the short story "La Graciosa," McCrackin's love of nature emerges in a memorable picture of the Salinas Valley.

It was a late spring day—the Valley still verdant with the growing grain, the mountains mottled with spots of brown where the rain of the whole winter had failed to make good the ravages of thousands of sheep, or where, perhaps, a streak of undiscovered mineral lay sleeping in the earth. Scant groups of trees dotted the Valley at far intervals, ranged themselves in rows where a little river ran at the foot of the Gabilan, and stood in lonely grandeur on the highest ridge of the mountain. Where the mountain sloped it grew covered with redwood, and where the hills shrank away they left a wide gap for the ocean breeze and the ocean fog to roll in.

Across the Valley was another mountain, dark and grand, with flecks of black growing chemasal [chamiso?] in clefts and crevices, and sunny slopes and green fields lying at its base. And oh! the charm of these mountains. In the Valley there might be the fog and the chill of the North, but on the mountains lay the warmth and the dreaminess of the South.

After marrying for a second time and settling on her Santa Cruz ranch, Monte Paraiso, McCrackin wrote increasingly on environmental topics.

–Contributed by Meghan Bass