Following Isabella and My Colorado Adventure, Book Review

Robert Root writes the story of how he followed Isabella Bird’s three-month (Sep-Dec) journey at age 42 through the Front Range of Colorado in 1873. While Bird seeks to understand this place, Root seeks to see what Colorado will mean to him after living most of his life in Michigan. 

He writes about that first view of the Rocky Mountains while driving from the plains; it is impossible to forget. It is a spellbinding moment of beauty and awe – that first glimpse of snow white peaks in the distance. He enters Colorado from the east similar to all migratory Americans, and me too. (17)

I know that view he describes from driving west from Maine in 2004. Like early adventures and explorers Root is lured west by the promise of new beginnings. 

As an outsider, Bird entered each new world with an openness to experience and an intention to record what she encountered. (19) I think this is a similar sentiment for me. I feel like every new trail or new state I move to there is an intention to record it and understand it. 

Bird was labeled high strung along with being an adventurer. In 1873 there were few women adventurers exploring the frontier.  Root writes her health improved while traveling. When home, she “wilted”. Her life was traveling and exploring but she preferred the less traveled parts of the world. She was always looking for the path less traveled, less populated areas. Also, novelty and freedom kept her healthy, Root writes. And this 1873 Colorado  challenged her resourcefulness and curiosity. A place unfettered by duties to her family and society is the world she created for herself. The plains and the makeshift settlements unsettled her but once she reached the canyons and mountains she remarked: 

“the canyon became utterly inaccessible…this was exciting; here was an inner world.” (47)

When she entered Estes Park, she came alive.

 “Mountain fever seized me”, she writes in her journal.

Root writes that she didn’t have much interest in the science of the place; she was interested in the mood it created in her or the circumstances it created for her. (63) I am captivated by her journal writing about the hike to Longs Peak. I just so happen to be reading this section of the book on the plane as I fly from Knoxville to Denver knowing I will see the peak in the distance. I never thought of climbing Longs, even after 10 years of living in Colorado but for some reason, I want to now. Maybe it is the emotion she writes about the trail to the top. I want to experience it the way she does. 

Root writes that Bird worried about writing about beautiful places because you don’t want the masses to find it. Similar to other nature writers, particularly Edward Abbey, she wanted to keep it to herself and unspoiled. 

Root reflects on Bird’s writing and his, and defines memoir and compares it to autobiography “Autobiography is a chronological art, an act of recordkeeping with commentary, not, like memoir, an attempt to revivify a period of the past, make it possible for another person to live the moment too through reading. Autobiography eschews the intimate, the commonplace detail,  the unexceptional private life; memoir embraces them.” (113)

Are you a sticker or a transient? Root answers: “If you stay too long in one place you can no longer  call yourself a transient or a traveler. You’ve become an inhabitant and you spend your time learning how to dwell there, day by day. For most of us, perhaps, this inevitable change is not only expected but anticipated. For Isabella Bird, it was frustrating and unacceptable.” (271)

I’m not a sticker but I’m not transient either – I think, maybe.

Bird came to Colorado on a recommendation of a friend, writes Root. She found more than she expected and didn’t expect to stay longer than she did. She traveled to remote places, places on the edge of the frontier, and avoided settled places. She preferred the wild and less cultivated areas. She went on to other places and wrote books about the other places and never mentioned Colorado again; and she never came back. She wanted to be in motion and test her limits. She retreated from a regulated life of responsibility and obligation and social constraints. 

Root is a nonfiction writer of place who wrote this book after moving to Colorado. He falls in love with the place as he follows Isabella’s travels in the Front Range. 

Like Root, I love to explore new places and find its “distinctive qualities” and learn its natural and cultural histories. “I’ve merely wanted to know where I am…I like who I am when I’m here,” he writes. I can say the same thing about the mountains towns I’ve lived in. I consider my current place, Sevierville a mountain town. 

Root ends his book with a pithy statement about Colorado that rings true to me and my discovery, while living in different places: “I can imagine moving on. I can’t imagine letting go.”

“The mountains are hard to ignore, hard to be complacent about, and yet the sight of them so often startles me, stuns me, as if I’m repeatedly discovering them anew.” (265)

August hike to Charlies Bunion GSMNP

The hike on Sunday to Charlie’s Bunion was a great day to be in the mountains. As I started on the AT from Newfound Gap I was thankful for cool temperatures and to see a few other solo, women hikers on the trail. I saw a few trail workers and hikers who have been on the trail a few days. 

I love being on the AT. While I do not have aspirations to through-hike this trail, I can appreciate the patience and dedication it takes to complete the feat. 

While hiking I was thinking of the book I’m reading, Following Isabella Travels in Colorado Then and Now. Since I’m traveling to Colorado soon I wanted to get in the Colorado spirit by reading about its history by Robert Root. But it got me thinking about the trip I just booked to Maine. I thought I should start reading a book about Maine to get in the spirit of traveling there. I start thinking about what I should read and Sarh Orne Jewett comes to mind. I have her biography and I’ve been to her house in South Berwick. I obsessively read about her many years ago. 

As I’m hiking I remember reading about Willa Cather and how she and Jewett wrote letters to each other, encouraging each other in their writing life. That advice is good: “Find a quiet place with the best companions.” Which is what I’m always unknowingly searching for in this life. 

While hiking I think of so many things I want to do. My mind wanders to books and people and places, and suddenly I’m deep into the mountains.

After 4 miles, I climbed to the rocky top of Charlie’s Bunion with expansive views of the mountain peaks. 

I hope to one day learn all the names of the peaks I see but for today, I just took in the view and was happy to be in the Smoky Mountains. 

On the way back to the car I talked to a father who was hiking with his two young girls. They hiked to the Jump Off for the sunrise. I love seeing young kids hiking on big trails. The girls were sweet and seemed thrilled to be hiking this morning. 

I passed about 15 people on the way back to the car, and I even saw one man in flip flops. 

I’m glad to be back hiking and running regularly. My training plan for the next 12 weeks is a long run on Saturday and a hike/run on Sunday. This plan is going to help me complete miles on the 900 miles map. As of today, I have completed 48.9 miles and I’m 2% done. Next week is Alum Trail to LeConte.

Why I Must Travel, Finding Home

I bought a few plane tickets and booked a couple car rentals this week. I can’t remember when I’ve felt so excited. Well, at least in the last year. 

See, the last year has been filled with moving plans, buying furniture, adopting a dog, buying a house and starting a new job. 

While all of these things are exciting in context, at my age they have produced unwanted  anxiety to the level that I’ve never felt before; although all self-inflicted. While anxious, travel and and seeing new places is the last thing on my mind. 

However, as things have settled down, one of the things that makes me want to travel is reading. After a period of stress and watching too much television, I have a thought about a book. I find a book on my bookshelf, or in a random online search and I’m suddenly reading for hours – I’m back to the self I like. 

The reading frenzy started with Thomas Wolfe and Look Homeward, Angel; a book I read 20 years ago and fell in love with. I live 90 minutes from the setting of the book and where Wolfe grew up. I drove over to Asheville and walked around Old Kentucky Home. 

I started reading his biographies and literary scholarship. I fell in love with him again. But reading Wolfe has led me back to my favorite author, Wallace Stegner. Reading Stegner makes me want to travel west, and so I booked my flight to Phoenix and can’t wait to see the desert, Grand Canyon and Tucson. 

Right now, I’m on a reading frenzy. I have books lined up: The Secret Knowledge of Water, Following Esabella, Dakota, Marking the Sparrow’s Fall and more. 

I’ve also started listening to audiobooks while driving. This was suggested to me by my friend Missy. I’ve mostly listened to music while driving all over East Tennessee. I live in the country so it’s a 15 minute drive minimum to anywhere I want to go except for the grocery store which is two miles down the road. YAY. I’m listening to Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner. Next up: Angle of Repose. I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on the words while driving but I can now lose myself in his descriptions of the midwest and west, his characters and their lives. 

Reading and traveling make me question everything, and that is always good for me. It makes me reevaluate my choices and where I live. I live in the south and after one year, I truly like living here and enjoy learning about this region. I’m reading books about its history, about Great Smoky Mountains National Park and nonfiction from local writers. 

As much as I like living here, and feel at home here, it’s always been a pattern of my thinking that I need to go away from a place, even if it’s just for a few days, to really appreciate it. I need that distance to think about my feelings towards a place I chose. Yes, I like living here but why do I really like it? One of the hard things to get used to living in East Tennessee is how far west in the eastern time zone it is; it is so dark in the morning. Right now, the sunrise is at 6:45 am and can’t walk dogs or run in pitch black for safety; from wildlife or crazy people.  

Distance helps me sort out complicated feelings of home, place and choices. In the last 25 years, home has always been where my dogs are. Could this be my forever home, a place I own and where all my stuff is? 

I’ve been told that if you don’t own a home you are considered homeless by the government. All these years I’ve been homeless while searching for my forever place. So there is this to think about while traveling and walking around the desert. 

I do know that as soon as I start writing packing lists and preparing dogs for the kennel my travel anxiety will begin. As much as I love being away from home, or the place I live, I will miss it and can’t wait to get back home again.

Review of Murder at the Jumpoff

I like how the story includes chapters that take place in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I also like how I found this book after hiking many of the trails in Greenbrier in GSMNP. I’ve  been on a lot of the trails in the book except for the manways. As I read the book I just kept thinking what a funny name to call the bushwhacking trails since I’ve always known them as organic trails; trails that the Forest Service despises in NH. I think it might be a Smokies thing.

I’m not a big murder mystery reader but the landscape of this  book held me close. I couldn’t put down the book. I really enjoyed how each chapter switched back and forth from each character’s perspective. I liked the characters especially Hatsy, Sally and Hector. 

Before and after reading the book I kept Googling the author, wanting to find out more about her. I wondered which character she was like; probably Hatsy. But I wondered why the author committed suicide? She had such an interesting life and lived in many different places, and was such a talented writer.  The mountains called her, and she moved around a lot. She travelled and lived in beautiful places like Colorado, New Hampshire and Vermont – all places I’ve lived and loved, primarily for their mountain landscapes. 

This book found me after I’d stopped hiking in the park for a bit, getting distracted by other life things.  I was frustrated that I couldn’t hike with dogs on trails, plus it was getting hot and humid. However, the last few weeks, every weekend I went to Greenbrier on a different trail. It was easy to get to – I didn’t have to drive through Gatlinburg on a weekend. And I was always on a time limit since I didn’t want my new pup to be in his crate for more than 5 hours. When I started reading the book, I wanted to hike more and get to know this park. 

I don’t have a desire, even after finishing the book to hike off trail – I like hiking and trail running on trails; this book was just a new perspective on the park. The characters in her book loved the challenges of the mountains and exploring the landscapes I love, too. 

In an interview the author said, “To me, off-trail hiking is a magical journey, a quest to discover incredible places that practically no one ever sees.”

I like reading books that take place somewhere I know. Scenes in this book took place in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Sevierville and Knoxville. It allowed me to enjoy the book more that the story took place here. Plus, the final chapter takes places in the White Mountains and the scene is a mountain I know. 

Excellent book. Here is a link to a story about her and her death:

Jenny’s obituary

Leadville Training, There are No Ideal Conditions

I’m officially registered for the Leadville 50 and Leadville 100 for 2023. This is my final attempt to finish Leadville 100 and get the buckle.

In 2019 I spent all my free time training for Leadville. I did everything right, or so I thought. However, I just couldn’t make it past mile 38 on race day. In the fall of 2021 I hired a coach and started training for the race in 2022 and by March I lost all motivation. I couldn’t recover and deferred the race to 2023.

Now it’s Go Time. It’s time to do the work. I live in the perfect place to train – in the mountains. Granted, the true perfect place to train is Colorado, but I’m here in Gatlinburg and will make the best of the Tennessee mountains. 

I have no excuses. I have a few things to do: 

  • Do The Work – follow the plan
  • Lose 20 lbs. 
  • Find training partners
  • Weight training

I’m a wee-bit still injured from twisting my ankle on the Gatlinburg Trail three weeks ago. My left ankle is still not 100%. I’ve been swimming at the Gatlinburg Community Pool for the last few weeks but it’s closing on Nov 9 for the entire month.

Such a bummer!

I’m also a wee-bit scared running alone in the park with so many trails closed right now due to aggressive bears. Officials are warning people to not hike alone on the trails. 

Twin Creeks Trail has been closed for over a month.

This is life as an endurance athlete: there are no ideal conditions. I’ve learned that every day you have to figure it out – how to get the work done, eat right, recover and sleep well. Fifteen years ago all of this seemed a bit easier. At 51, everything is harder: the body doesn’t recover as quickly, I’m slower than ever and the mental game seems to be regressing. 

Here are the books I’m reading to help me with the mental game:

I’ll be writing book reviews as I finish them so stay tuned to my blog. 

At the end of the day, Everything is Good. Hard. Fun. Difficult. Complicated.