book review: "a lady's life in the rocky mountains"
Post on 14-Dec-2015
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Bird, Isabella L. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879-80 illus., 296 p.
Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904) was a Victorian Englishwoman,
born in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, who authored several books
about her various travels outside of Great Britain, including
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) and The Golden Chersonese and the
Way Thither (1883). A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879),
along with these two volumes, made Bird famous, especially in
Britain, and established her reputation as an intrepid
nineteenth-century adventurer. Bird was also the first woman
elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Bird was a petite and frail woman, who suffered from many
disorders early in life. In 1850, at nineteen years of age, she
had growth removed from her back. The operation, only partially
successful, caused her to continue to suffer various maladies
over the course of her lifetime. Her doctor’s prescription was
for Bird to undertake travel, as a way to divert her attention
away from her infirmities. This fortuitous advice became the
impetus for Bird’s lifelong passion of traveling, the first of
which she undertook to North America, in 1854. This inaugural
trip fueled Bird's insatiable appetite for other adventures over
the years. Moreover, the trip, which she chronicled in The
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Englishwoman in America, her first published work, established
her as a successful travel book writer.
A Lady's Life was Bird’s third book published, and arguably
her most famous work. In A Lady's Life, letters are the literary
form used by Bird. These letters, seventeen in all, originally
written to her sister, Henrietta, living back in England, detail
Bird’s six-month journey through the western US, including
Colorado, in 1873. Bird, a single woman in her early forties at
the time, traveled without companions and rode frontwards, not
sidesaddle, like most women of her day, covering more than 800
miles in the wilderness of the Rockies, the majority of which she
completed in winter.
Her series of letters to her sister paints an exquisite
portrait of the natural beauty of the Rockies, the character of
people she came upon, and their way of life living in the
mountains, as well as her encounter with “Mountain Jim” Nugent, a
rugged trapper and scout, with whom she was enamored from the
first day the two met. Bird’s time in Colorado seems to have been
brightened by her association with Nugent, just as his life was
by his relationship with her. Unfortunately, a year after Bird
returned to England, Nugent was shot and killed back in Colorado.
A Lady's Life begins with Bird’s arrival in San Francisco.
From there, she went by train to Truckee, and then traveled alone
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by horseback to Lake Tahoe, eventually reaching Estes Park,
Colorado. Bird’s narrative to Este Park is told in such glorious
detail, especially her description of the area’s remarkable
beauty, notably its snow-capped mountains, readers cannot help
but feel they are actually viewing it with their own eyes. While
there are many things to be gleaned from reading A Lady's Life,
the most important take away is the author’s message about the
ephemeral quality of life.
The historical significance of A Lady's Life is the book’s
probable role in raising public awareness of the wilderness and
the need for its continued preservation. As the first work
popularizing a tourist’s experience traveling in the wilderness,
the volume was the catalyst for other tourists undertaking
similar adventures; thereby ushering in the modern conservation
movement. I highly recommend this excellent book to other
students.
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