Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904) was a Victorian adventurer, world-wide traveler and natural historian. Her later travel memoirs included India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea and Canada. She wrote eight popular books about her adventures. Amazon.com lists more than 20 books either by or about her.

This memoir consists of 17 letters to her sister about her remarkable trip in 1873. For the most part she traveled alone, but with help from many people and several friends she made along the way. This middle-aged Englishwoman toured the Colorado Rockies on horseback – usually alone – throughout the year so she saw all the seasons in the mountains. She had the stamina to endure the very rugged territory of that period, with few good roads or trails. Even finding anyone who could guide her to Estes Park involved several adventures before final success. She loved Estes Park, where only a few people lived at the time, and made it her base.

Isabella Lucy Bird had an extraordinary curiosity to explore new places and her adventures, many involving great hardships, all of which are well described – not just nature but the types of people she met on her adventures. One of her remarkable adventures was ascending Long’s Peak (about 14,000 feet that dominated the mountains near Estes Park) by horseback until they had to walk and climb the last, hardest, frigid part of the ascent. She makes it very clear how much she preferred living in the mountains than in the cities of Colorado, none of which she found even tolerable in 1873. This travel memoir is a very good read, with keen insights on the various types of people she encountered and with superb descriptions of the raw beauty of the Colorado Rockies.