“Isabella was an adventure junkie. She became alive in her body when she was in the wild”
LINDA BALLOU (left) tells us about the exploits of the 19th-century British adventurer Isabella Bird, whose journeys are retraced in a new BBC series
Trailblazers sees Ruby Wax, Melanie Brown and Emily Atack travelling in the footsteps of Isabella Bird. What was your involvement in the series?
I was interviewed as an expert. Isabella is a legend in Estes Park, Colorado, where she’s considered to be the mother of the Rocky Mountain National Park. She wrote so glowingly of the place that it brought millions of tourists to the area. I first went there because of her book, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. It was because of Isabella that I became a travel writer. And my 2021 novel, Embrace of the Wild, was inspired by her life.
What was Isabella like?
She was an adventure junkie. She found adrenaline and became alive in her body when she was in the wild. She didn’t like going to civilised places when she travelled. Also, she had what she called “interest”. She said, “I would be a very lonely person if it weren’t for my interest”, which I believe is another word for curiosity and wanting to experience the world.
I consider her to be an empowered woman and a role model. She wasn’t interested in convincing anybody to be the way she was.
Her travels in 1873, in both the Sandwich Islands (the Hawaiian archipelago) and the Colorado wilderness, seem to be key to her story. Is that how you see it? of a volcano, and she had to ride in a have to suffer pain in her back, which
When she was sitting with her spine aligned, she could gallop with the wind.
Jim Nugent, known as “Rocky Mountain Jim”, was Bird’s guide when she climbed the 4,346m Longs Peak in Estes Park. Who was he?
He was a ruffian with the soul of a poet, a teller of tales. He was an alcoholic, a trapper, he lived in a hovel. Nugent declared himself a guardian of the mountains. You couldn’t get to Estes Park without going past the settlement of Muggins Gulch, where his cabin was, and he would collect a toll. Half of his face had been disfigured by a bear.
People like to imagine a romance between the two, but would it be better to see Isabella Bird as the heroine of her own story?
Yes, marriage was not important to her. She was looking to be free – spiritually, emotionally and physically free. is expected to air in late November on BBC Two and iPlayer