She reached sublime summits only through terror and brute assistance, not skill
Evidence
Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with voices of grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and infinity, “Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” Never-to-be-forgotten glories they were, burnt in upon my memory by six succeeding hours of terror. You know I have no head and no ankles, and never ought to dream of mountaineering; and had I known that the ascent was a real mountaineering feat I should not have felt the slightest ambition to perform it. As it is, I am only humiliated by my success, for “Jim” dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 113
Categorization
- CANDY: The Victorian lady who climbed by being ‘dragged up like a bale of goods’ yet records the sublime view is delightfully quotable.
- XREF: The mix of romantic sublimity and frank physical humiliation parallels how other early women travel writers narrate their own supposed frailty.
Related
- Climbing to nearly 15,000 feet exacts severe physical costs on nineteenth-century women travelers. (similarity 0.80)
- Fear physically paralyzed a confident traveler on the mountainside (similarity 0.79)
- The guide’s incompetence forced brutal physical struggle on the horses and riders (similarity 0.78)