Mountain travel demands counting ranges crossed and fords forded

Evidence

Page 199 canyon, with its fantastically-stained walls; then the long ascent through sweeping foot hills to the gates of rock at a height of 9,000 feet; then the wildest and most wonderful scenery for twenty miles, in which you cross thirteen ranges from 9,000 to 11,000 feet high, pass through countless canyons and gulches, cross thirteen dark fords, and finally descend, through M’Ginn’s Gulch, upon this, the gem of the Rocky Mountains. It was a weird ride. I got on very slowly. The road is a hard one for any horse, specially for a heavily-loaded one, and at the end of several weeks of severe travel. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 218

Categorization

• SEED: The counters — thirteen ranges, thirteen fords, 9,000 to 11,000 feet — are exactly the sort of concrete load-bearing detail that makes a landscape essay land; worth pinning as a model of place-writing.