Getting lost in high wilderness sharpens rather than weakens resolve

Evidence

At this great height, and most artistically situated, we came upon a rude log camp tenanted in winter by an elk hunter, but now deserted. Chalmers without any scruple picked the padlock; we lighted a fire, made some tea, and fried some bacon, and after a good meal mounted again and started for Estes Park. For four weary hours we searched hither and thither along every indentation of the ground which might be supposed to slope towards the Big Thompson River, which we knew had to be forded. Still, as the quest grew more tedious, Long’s Peak stood before us as a landmark in purple glory; and still at his feet lay a hollow filled with deep blue atmosphere, where I knew that Estes Park must lie, and still between us and it lay never-lessening miles of inaccessibility, and the sun was ever westering, and the shadows ever lengthening, and Chalmers, who had started confident, bumptious, blatant, was ever becoming more bewildered, and his wife’s thin voice more piping and discontented, and my stumbling horse more insecure, and I more determined (as I am at this moment) that somehow or other I would reach that blue hollow, and even stand on Long’s Peak where the snow was glittering. Affairs were becoming serious, and Chalmers’s incompetence a source of real peril, when, after an exploring expedition, he returned more bumptious than ever, saying he knew it would be all right, he had found a trail, and we could get across the river by dark, and camp out for the night. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 79

Categorization

• FICTION: The unreliable guide whose confidence inversely tracks actual competence, paired with a narrator whose determination rises exactly as her guide’s fails, is a ready-made dramatic engine for any expedition story.
• XREF: connects to: Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature; Observations of persistence can renew a discouraged person’s resolve — , A Year of World Stories, 406

Broader Connections

• Observations of persistence can renew a discouraged person’s resolve #expands (0.74) — , A Year of World Stories, 406
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature #qualifies (0.72)