Divinity of Nature
While describing the landscapes in detail, Austin frequently suggests that nature is the work of God or houses spiritual entity in general. For example, she praises God's work, alluding to the book of Genesis: "The mesquite is God's best thought in all this desertness." Describing a mountain range, she creates a sense of wonder: "When those glossy domes swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how long and imperturbable are the purposes of God." She dramatizes particularly awesome experiences such as thunderstorms, calling them "the fume of the gods rising from their meeting place under the rim of the world" and "the visible manifestation of the Spirit moving itself in the void." At one point she even compares the thunderstorms with the apocalypse to emphasize their devastating power. However, she is equally impressed by the purity of the land: "For one thing there is the divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere in God's world."
Names
Another theme is Austin's fascination with names, praising the Indians and children in particular for coming up with the most fitting names for flora and fauna. For example, she explains that one kind of gilia is called evening snow, "and it is no use trying to improve on children's names for wild flowers." Additionally, she likes "that name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone Pine, and find it pertinent to [her] subject,--Oppapago, The Weeper." Moreover, she points out that the names of places hint at their historical backgrounds and their discoverers or occupants: "Here you have the Spanish Californian in Cero Gordo and pinon; Symmes and Shepherd, pioneers both; Tunawai, probably Shoshone; Oak Creek, Kearsarge,--easy to fix the date of that christening,--Tinpah, Paiute that; Mist Canon and Paddy Jack's." She also criticizes the names that some flowers have been given as inappropriate, because she is "sure we make too free use of this word FALSE in naming plants--false mallow, false lupine, and the like."
Humans and Nature
On her travels through Southern California, Austin meets a range of people as well. While she describes civilized people in a rather condescending way, claiming that they will never understand and fully appreciate this land because their camping trips are too short ("But the real heart and core of the country are not to become at in a month's vacation"), she glorifies the life of the simple folk and Indians who live in harmony with the land and the spirits within. This view culminates in the description of the seemingly utopian town of El Pueblo de Las Uvas, where houses are made of earth, and people live without any crime or class distinction, borrowing what they need from one another. This ending chapter illustrates how Austin idealizes the people who have found their place in the divine scheme of nature without exploiting it or each other. Therefore, her book ends with this message for her target audience, the civilized people: "Come away, you who are obsessed with your own importance in the scheme of things, and have got nothing you did not sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills to the even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El Pueblo de Las Uvas."
