Trackless plains can feel navigable only by metaphor borrowed from the sea

Evidence

It is a dreary ride of thirty miles over the low brown plains to Denver, very little settled, and with trails going in all directions. My sailing orders were “steer south, and keep to the best beaten track,” and it seemed like embarking on the ocean without a compass. The rolling brown waves on which you see a horse a mile and a half off impress one strangely, and at noon the sky darkened up for another storm, the mountains swept down in blackness to the Plains, and the higher peaks took on a ghastly grimness horrid to behold. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 155

Categorization

• XREF: The prairie-as-ocean conceit recurs throughout westward travel writing and could sit beside the landscape-as-character material in the tree-infrastructure essay. — connects to: Crossing the silent, trackless prairie felt like being lost at sea without a compass — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 55
• FICTION: A lone rider navigating by a single remembered instruction, no compass, a storm wall sweeping down off the mountains — a ready-made opening scene.

Broader Connections

• Crossing the silent, trackless prairie felt like being lost at sea without a compass #corroborates (1.00) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 55