Isabella Lucy Bird: A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

"A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" is the story of Isabella Lucy Bird, daughter of a clergyman, who set off alone in search of health and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. Over the years she explored Asia, the Sandwich Islands, Hawaii, and both the Eastern and Western United States. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, Isabella Lucy Bird rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement. Traveling alone, usually on horseback, often with no clear idea of where she would spend the night in what was mostly uninhabited wilderness, Isabella Lucy Bird covered over a thousand miles, most of it during the winter months. A well-educated woman who had known a comfortable life, she thought nothing of herding cattle at a hard gallop, falling through ice, getting lost in snowstorms, and living in a cabin where the temperatures were well below zero and her ink froze even as she wrote. Isabella Lucy Bird befriended desperados and climbed 14,000 foot mountains, ready for any adventure that allowed her to see the unparalleled beauty of nature. Her rare complaints had more to do with having to ride side-saddle while in town than with the conditions she faced. "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" contains letters written to Isabella's sister during her six-month journey through the Colorado Rockies in 1873. 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. An awe-inspiring woman, Isabella Lucy Bird was a talented writer who brings to life, in "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," the Colorado of more than one hundred years ago, when today's big cities were only a small collection of frame houses, and beautiful scenic areas were still largely untouched. A classic account of a truly astounding journey.