Leaving the flatlands of Michigan for the spatial largesse of Colorado, Root (Landscapes with Figures
) follows the 1873 tour by nature writer and pioneer Isabella Bird. Conflating Bird's travails as chronicled in A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
with his own narrative, Root both educates about the experiences of the Victorian “clergyman's daughter, an invalid... an apparent spinster until the age of fifty, a small, well-mannered woman who traveled alone and mostly rode astraddle in an age when ladies rode side-saddle” and compares them to his own impressions of Colorado. Problematically, Root's story of “motor tours or hikes [that] take place on weekdays” pales in comparison to that of Bird traversing a still wild west. While he says “we all need—or ought—to know where we are, not merely the address but the nature of the place,” Root's account relies on mundane details of his daily activities and effusive statements (“How grand it would feel to make the passage through and to emerge once again in unlimited space, in a place that might fill me”). 10 b&w illus. (May)
