This was a book my neighbor lent to me as we share an incredible view of some of the rocky mountains. I found this interesting as a woman living where I do but I don't think many other people will find it of much interest. I enjoyed reading it until the work showed its age by discussing the "Indian Problem" with 50 pages to go and I lost my taste for it. After that it was an uphill battle to get back on track. As I said I enjoyed it but probably won't be rereading.

3.5 stars.

Definitely not something to read all at once. I found this a nice cozy bedtime read a few nights a week, which honestly fits the epistolary narrative of the book. While it did start to get sort of repetitive, it was still a lovely read. It truly made me nostalgic for cold snowy winter days... despite her writing about lack of supplies and food and being snowed in and freezing, it still made me miss it all. She captured the harsh quietude and landscape excellently too.

Isabella Lucy Bird suffered many illnesses, and her doctor recommended an open-air life. Bird left her native England and began her travels. From New Zealand to Hawaii, she moved to Colorado in 1873 because her heard the air was excellent for the 'infirm.' Bird covered over 800 miles in the Rocky Mountains in 1873, mostly alone. Her letters to her sister about her travels document her adventures and were published as "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains."

Bird was one of the first women to ascend Long's Peak. Her descriptive writing of the flora and fauna, the mountains and valleys, the sunsets and sunrises are spiritual. The people she met and the struggles she incurred make you admire her and glad you can travel with her by reading her letters.

It's rare that I read Westerns due to the genre being one of the wrongest things that ever wronged in the history of United States' literature. Another one is the holiday being celebrated today by the US Federal Government, a day that my ongoing reads of [b:Genesis|264891|Genesis (Memory of Fire, #1)|Eduardo Galeano|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388547039s/264891.jpg|256798] and [b:Almanac of the Dead|52385|Almanac of the Dead|Leslie Marmon Silko|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386924233s/52385.jpg|316915] has thrown into piercing scrutiny. This work was the odd one out in the group in the brutal sense of the word, something I knew would be the case when I started out but didn't deter me due to, frankly, the shock I felt at learning that an English woman rode hundreds of miles in the Northwestern United States in 1873 and lived to not only tell, but write the tale. Her story is one where her deed proves her more a feminist than her word, a word that is horribly imperialist and the reason why I find more worth in a single work of fiction by an actual citizen than a hundred nonfiction pieces by tourists, but with a bag of salt these letters render the concept of the "fairer sex" null and void. It's compromised, but unlike reading something written by a white man during the same time period, this piece cuts through some of the bullshit by the sheer fact of existing.

I pass hastily over the early part of the journey, the crossing the bay in a fog as chill as November, the number of "lunch baskets," which gave the car the look of conveying a great picnic party, the last view of the Pacific, on which I had looked for nearly a year, the fierce sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the look of long rainlessness, which one may not call drought, the valleys with sides crimson with the poison oak, the dusty vineyards, with great purple clusters thick among the leaves, and between the vines great dusty melons lying on the dusty earth.

It helps that she's a decent prose stylist, along with the fact that for a while at the beginning, she's traveling through the area I grew up in. California is not one that crops up often in the literature I read, and when it does it is most often Los Angeles that graces the pages, a city I have my share of memories in but in no way compares to remembrance of the Bay Area. Reveler in imagery that I am, it is different when another agrees with the oddities, annoyances, and beauty that I have encountered in my daily life in and around San Francisco, a concordance that only becomes more precious when separated by almost 150 years. In other words, it made me nostalgic, but that happens rarely enough that I can afford to indulge.

In traveling there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans.

Judgmental she was, but not enough to forbear having a sense of humor. This and a firm (white) head on her shoulders helped her immensely through snow storms, bears, near starvation, a useless poet with a bottomless stomach, and a particularly infamous desperado called "Mountain Jim" who Bird had the most interesting time with because she thought he was really hot. She danced around the pronouncement like any white woman did at the time, but that's how it was.

I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men both on sea and land during the last two years, and the more important I think the "mission" of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness.

This is her in her last letter following up on her viewing the wife doing all the work in various settlements she stayed at as completely normal. How she would describe her own commitment to travel that would in the future venture far beyond shores both European and United States, I cannot say. However, she did write it down for those of us who need a "Look! If she could do it almost 150 years ago, so can I," every so often, so that's of merit.

Birdie slipped so alarmingly that I got off and walked, but then neither of us could keep our feet, and in the darkness she seemed so likely to fall upon me, that I took out of my pack the man's socks which had been given me at Perry's Park, and drew them on over her fore-feet—an expedient which for a time succeeded admirably, and which I commend to all travelers similarly circumstanced.

A bit of humor for the road.

The lady is quite the extreme risk taker and ace rider, and she writes a mean description of Divide beauty. It is too bad about the racism, but I really enjoyed this short book, perhaps nonfiction is the exception to my general dislike of epistolary narratives

The book is a fascinating account of Bird's travels mostly through Colorado. She was a tough old bird (pun intended), and she attempted something that most others would not have. I do respect her for that. I found reading about her trials pretty interesting.

That said, I think she was an average writer at best. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the likes of [a:Jon Krakauer|1235|Jon Krakauer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1199903308p2/1235.jpg]. Independent of the quality of her writing, Bird strikes me as very self-centered and judgmental. This is significant to me as it was likely to affect the objectivity of her writing. That and it annoyed me at times.

She also compromised her credibility by claiming Colorado to be a state before it actually was. I am not sure if this was just a mistake while she was writing or if (as the editor suggests) she went back and modified this part of her letters at a later date. (If the latter, what else might she have modified?)

The Longs Peak climb was of interest to me, as I have made that trek myself. I took the traditional route that the 2 younger men with her took. I did not even know the route that she and Jim took was possible, but her account of the the ledge the 2 younger men took was not exaggerated. It is very narrow with a drop-off that seems to go forever. (This makes 2-way traffic on that ledge ... interesting.) In any case, she was not in the proper shape for this climb, and she was lucky to make it back alive.

Quite an amazing memoir of the author's adventure exploring the Colorado Rockies on horseback in the 1870s. I recommend the audiobook (for free via LibreVox).

Great book! Isabella Bird was an English woman who traveled around the world by herself. This book is made up of the letters she wrote to her sister in 1873 during her trip in Colorado and staying in Estes Park. She stayed in places with other people along her travels but most of her travel time was by herself. Amazing. She was about 46 when she did this in 1873.