Her photos adorn my refrigerator at home as well as my office bulletin board. Auntie Ethel has become a source of inspiration for me, but with an interesting twist: We've never met, we aren't related and Ethel has been dead for 30 years.

Ethel Stunt was the last surviving member of the family who homesteaded Stunt Ranch in the late 1800s and for whom the UCLA-managed reserve, located in the Santa Monica Mountains west of Topanga Canyon, is named. I'm staff director of this reserve and an avid keeper of its history.

From the moment I saw her in a black-and-white photo by her 1919 cabin at Stunt Ranch, it was love at first sight. The more I learn about Ethel's life of 90 years - her childhood in England; her young adulthood working for the British embassy in China; her life at Stunt Ranch with her brother Harry; and, following his death, her solo existence amidst hundreds of acres of wilderness for the last 15 years of her life - the more my admiration for her grows.

Although Ethel never married and was childless, she wasn't lonely. Her neighbors were a close bunch. Following her death in 1970, Ed Hall and his parents, who lived nearby and became Ethel's defacto family, saved her belongings. Ed, now grown and living in Montana, served as my link to Ethel.

Ever since Ed discovered the reserve's Web site, he regularly sends me packages of her effects, which will eventually be displayed in the soon-to-be rebuilt Stunt Ranch Reserve nature center for thousands of visitors to see.

Knowing how much a loved one's possessions mean to their survivors, I respectfully open the carefully hand-wrapped parcels to inspect the items. Many are more than 100 years old and quite fragile. Among these treasures are the Stunt family's photo album, circa 1860-1900; Ethel's scrapbook with autographs and original artwork; and 32 books from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. I look at the photos as if the people in them are my own long-lost relatives. Imagining the care that Ethel took placing the photos in her albums, I envision her enjoying them many times over the years. Diverse as her life, Ethel's book choices ran the gamut from "Ivanhoe" to "The Legend of St. Francis." I take great pleasure knowing that the books I unpack (and want to read) are the same Ethel held and read while sitting under her oaks on a gentle spring day or snug in her cabin in the heart of winter.

Folks who knew Ethel well call her Auntie Ethel. I think of her as my Auntie too. I've walked the same paths as she at Stunt Ranch. I've written poetry under the oak tree named for her, and I've been inspired by hawks circling overhead, descendants of the birds she may have seen as she looked into the summer sky. I feel a special closeness to her, knowing that her walking sticks, fur muff and collar and Holy Bible, packed away with care, temporarily reside in my office cabinet.

And when faced with difficult challenges, I remember the unpretentiously heroic things Ethel did, and say, "If my Auntie Ethel can do this, then so can I!"

Carol Felixson is director of education and community outreach for the UCLA Stunt Ranch Reserve, Santa Monica Mountains.