Well-written account of an incredible Rocky Mountain experience!

books:

	• A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (The Western Frontier Library, 14) Isabella Lucy Bird, Daniel J. Boorstin University of Oklahoma Press, 1999 - 276 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Don't overlook this

For many years I saw this book in National Park bookstores and passed it by thinking it would be an example of the overwritten, rather tedious journals of other Victorian travelers. When I finally found it at a used bookstore and rather reluctantly bought it, I was surprised to find out how exciting and relevant her story was.

Because I live in Colorado, I recoginize and travel through many of the places she describes. Just this weekend as we traveled along Highway 67, my husband and I remarked on the likelihood, that this was the same route she'd taken out of Colorado Springs.

Her accounts lend life to the grey, weatherbeaten cabins, abandoned roads and rusting rails that we see. Even though many parts of Europe and the US were relatively modern at the time of her adventures, it is surprising to read just how primitive and precarious was the life of many Colorado settlers.

Even if you aren't from Colorado, read this book to become aquainted with a Victorian woman who found a way to live life fully. Read it to learn about life in the west. Read it just because it's a good read.

for more information click here

descriptive

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the descriptive way the author wrote. I have been through Colorado and have seen the beauty she described. Also enjoyed the story because there wasn't a lot of violence and if there was any sex, it was only in our imagination which is the greatest kind. I was amazed at how the lady rode for miles in rugged wilderness without seeming to get lost. The fact that she could subsist on meager food was also interesting.

for more information click here

Free Bird

Did you ever read any of the BEANY MALONE novels by Lenora Mattingly Weber? In them I first read about Isabella Bird and her remarkable life in the American West. Beany's older brother, Johnny Malone, is a teenager when the series begins, a young Denver boy with a remarkable passion for unearthing the memoirs and daguerrotypes of Colorado pioneers and taking notes on the old-timers who settled the state. Their colorful lives make his ordinary life seem rather pastel, so he often sinks into a nostalgia of the past, while his family members tease him about the dreamy look in his eyes. He helps a veteran journalist, Emerson Worth, complete his magnum opus, OUR CITY HAS DEEP ROOTS. And among the pioneers Johnny obsessed about was none other than Isabella Bird, so when I found this book on a recent trip to Boulder, I added it to my rucksack.

If you are reading on horseback, as Isabella Bird did, this is perhaps the ideal book to carry with you. She was a woman used to the English-style horse with its Ascot breeding and high carriage. What she found in Colorado were, naturally, the horses of the West, more perfectly adapted to the mile-high atmospheres, but slung somewhat lower than anything she's been used to and slightly swaybacked. Bird adapted quickly, and the fun of her autobiography is to see her taking in her stride a series of calamities and hardships that would have Job complaining bitterly! No matter if it's an insect infestation or tumbling right through a sheet of ice into zero degree river chills, for Isabella Bird it's all part of a day's fun. Travel writing in the 19th century was, of course, the leading genre of prose. From no other source were English-speaking readers able to find out more about other people's lives, and the curiosity was immense.

You'll like Isabella, and her crazy love affair with Colorado. She remains very much a lady, but will challenge your preconceived notions of what a lady is and isn't. Most of all you will thrill to follow the course of her journeys up and down the mountains through which, now, there are some better trails but still the same amazing sunrises which she describes with the thrill of one for whom every day's an adventure.

for more information click here

Well-written account of an incredible Rocky Mountain experience!

I bought this book while visiting Estes Park, CO...hungry for books about life in the West that may not be so readily available here in NJ. I found it to be one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read! Isabella's descriptions of the Rocky Mountains and the climate through which she travelled are vivid and gripping. But more than that, she gives a detailed and honest account of what life was like for settlers on the frontier. How she managed to ride thru the mountains where the only "trails" were tracks of wagons or animals, when often those were covered with the seemingly constant snow, boggles the mind. Her love for Colorado sings out in every word she writes. I too was deeply touched by its beauty, and hope to return again, this time with an enriched appreciation due to this wonderful recounting of Isabella Bird's journey.

for more information click here

very good review

This book arrived in top condition and in time. In a college book store this book cost a lot more, so I am very pleased to be able to buy it from this seller.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

In 1872, Isabella Bird, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes 'in search of health' and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement. The letters that make up this volume were first published in 1879. They tell of magnificent, unspoiled landscapes and abundant wildlife, of encounters with rattlesnakes, wolves, pumas and grizzly bears, and her reactions to the volatile passions of the miners and pioneer settlers. A classic account of a truly astounding journey.

for more information click here

hot