Context
Corral de Tierra or “fence of earth” (originally a Spanish/Mexican rancho) is a small valley that cuts south off the Salinas/Monterey road, Highway 68. Steinbeck’s Aunt Mollie lived there briefly at the Martin Ranch, where tomatoes were grown, as well as corn, squash and pumpkins. But what Steinbeck loved best about the region were the limestone cliffs that rise above the valley, tall white cliffs that seemed like King Arthur’s keep to the impressionable young John. He avidly read the Arthurian tales, and spent long hours with his younger sister Mary pretending to be knights and squires loping through the serene valley.
His second book, The Pastures of Heaven, is located in this valley. This interconnected series of short stories describes the frustrated dreams of farmers who live there, as well as weaving in some of the stories of land ownership in Alta California. In Monterey County, the Tularacitos tract, for example, was granted to Gomez—the same names Steinbeck uses in his novel. And schoolteacher Molly Morgan is fascinated with the legend of Mexican bandit Vasquez.
In all of Steinbeck’s California fiction, land stewardship is a holistic narrative that is at once historical, natural, and cultural:
“When one farmer meets another they seldom go into a house,” he writes in Pastures. “Instead, they walk slowly over the land, pulling bits of grass from the fields, or leaves from the trees and testing them with their fingers while they talk.”