A single recounted life can plumb depths of ruin beyond any fiction.

Evidence

“If you want to know,” he continued, ”how nearly a man can become a devil, I’ll tell you now.” There was no choice, and we rode up the canyon, and I listened to one of the darkest tales of ruin I have ever heard or read. Its early features were very simple. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 223

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: Frame the chapter as the tale-within-a-tale of Nugent’s descent — a man who narrates his own transformation into a devil while riding through a snow-threatened canyon.
• XREF: Echoes the confessional, ruin-narrating outsider figures in Naomi Klein-adjacent frontier memoirs and in the outlaw sections of Isabella Bird’s own later letters.