Isolation makes benign mountains swell into impassable psychological barriers

Evidence

When the men are out hunting I know not where, or at night, when storms sweep down from Long’s Peak, and the air is full of stinging, tempest-driven snow, and there is barely a probability of any one coming, or of my communication with the world at all, then the stupendous mountain ranges which lie between us and the Plains grow in height till they become impassable barriers, and the bridgeless rivers grow in depth, and I wonder if all my life is to be spent here in washing and sweeping and baking. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 227

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The mechanism — geography literally growing in height as morale falls — is a device for rendering a character’s claustrophobia without stating it.
• DEEPTHINKING: A compact account of how perceived landscape is manufactured by fear and by knowing no one is coming.
• XREF: connects to: A mountain can grow in the mind into a living personality — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 103