A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Volume 14) (The Western Frontier Library Series)

This is one great book! Adventure - the wild times in 19th Century Colorado, and it's all told by one heck of a lady! Men will enjoy the book, but it will be an inspiration to young women today! I bought a copy years ago - lost it after some time. I HAD to buy another copy for my library! It's that good. I bought a copy for my grand daughter who is 16... hoping it will inspire her to greater things in life.

This is one of the best known and most highly respected travel accounts of a foreigner to the western region of the United States during the 19th century. Isabella Bird, a spinster world traveler, upon returning to her native England from an excursion to Hawaii, decided to stop in America and make a three-month tour of the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado. In a series of letters written to her sister in England, Ms. Bird told in fascinating detail her experiences during this "tour." Going by train from San Francisco to Cheyenne (except for a brief hiatus near Truckee Pass, which she traversed by horseback), she was in Fort Collins, Colorado, by September 10, 1873. Her travels took her to Denver, Colorado Springs, South Park, Boulder, and Estes Park, where she climbed Longs Peak. Her observations, whether about the people she encounters or the natural wonders all about her, are acute, objective, and highly personal. She will complain about the annoying insects in one letter and then calmly relate taking a tumble off her horse when surprised by a bear in another. She is astounded by the natural beauty of the region and never seems to get enough of it; she also believes, as the saying then went, that "there is no God west of the Missouri," and that the "almighty dollar is the true divinity" (these observations made while in Denver). She recognizes the (especially) English prejudice against all things American, and refuses to go along with it. What makes Ms. Bird's book so enduring is the direct though lighthearted tone she maintains: she is an astute observer but never gives the impression she's "studying" the people or places she sees. The book can be read often and will remain entertaining each time. It's a classic - in a good sense of that word. Highly recommended.

"It is hard to recall another woman in any age or country who traveled as widely, saw so much, and who left so perceptive a record of what she saw," says Daniel Boorstin who wrote an introduction to this edition of "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains." The daughter of a respectable English clergyman, Isabella Bird was a short, dumpy, 41-year old spinster in 1873 when she visited Colorado. She found there a bunch of people she mostly disliked, but a place -- Estes Park -- on which she lavished pages of Wordsworthian nature worship. She climbed Long's Peak -- no small feat of physical endurance -- described Denver, Colorado Springs, and other Colorado cities, and lived briefly the life of a pioneer ranchwoman in a mountain wilderness. The reader should be aware of a romantic subtext not fully described in "A Lady's Life." Isabella met "Rocky Mountain Jim" Nugent, a famous desperado who she described as an "awful looking a ruffian as one could see." Jim became her guide and companion in Estes Park, but she only hints in her book at a romantic attachment. In letters to her sister in Scotland, she tells much more of the relationship and of Jim's ardour and his marriage proposal. Was she fantasizing? Was Jim, known as a ladies man, putting out a lot of Irish blarney to this less-than-glamorous gentlewoman? Or was his infatuation with her real? The relationship between the two is explored in several biographies of Bird. In any case, Isabella left Jim behind and headed back to Scotland after a couple of months. Jim was killed in a gunfight a few months later by another man Isabella had known. A romantic triangle? Who knows? With a story like this -- and a backstory of frustated love and gunfights -- "A Ladies Life in the Rocky Mountains" can hardly fail to be fascinating. Boorstin contributes an excellent introduction to this edition; however, an informative annotated and illustrated edition, edited by Ernest S. Bernard, is also available. Isabella Bird was quite a woman. Smallchief

A must for the reader who is searching for a first hand description of life in the Rocky's in the 1800's. It includes wonderful sketches by the author and great descriptions of characters and adventures in the untamed West. A great book for bedtime and rainy day reading.