Jo Woolf recounts the tale of some intrepid women travellers

“Why must the heart always desire the inaccessible? The last flower at the edge of the precipice?” (“Stepping Stones From Alaska To Asia”, 1937)

It was the land of the far north that spoke to the soul of Scotswoman Isobel Wylie Hutchison.

Born at Carlowrie Castle in West Lothian, she defied her mother’s expectations that she marry and settle down into domestic routine. Instead, in 1927, she embarked on a ship bound for Angmagssalik in south-eastern Greenland.

As an accomplished botanist, artist and writer, she journeyed across the frozen landscape and explored the tranquil fjords in her mission to collect plant specimens and study the culture of the Inuit people.

An entire winter in Greenland gave her an appetite for more adventure.

In 1933, Isobel set out for Alaska and Arctic Canada, travelling by ship, railroad and dog sled, and sleeping in igloos as the Northern Lights danced across the starlit sky.

Her route was ambitious, taking her through the Bering Strait and across the Beaufort Sea.

She had an unconscious knack of winning hearts. Strangers quickly became friends, but always with a healthy respect. And she certainly deserved it.

On board a tiny trading vessel with a crew of three, pitching about amid storms and icebergs off the coast of Alaska, Isobel wrote to her sister:

“My one regret is a hot bath . . . the ‘bathroom’ is a pail in the engine room! Golly! I will have lots to tell if I ever get home again!”

Isobel’s descriptions are vivid and uplifting, the outpourings of a vagabond heart that greets new discoveries with uninhibited joy.

In her books, which include “On Greenland’s Closed Shore” and

“North To The Rime-ringed Sun”, we feel like privileged companions as she treads reverently into sacred birch groves and gathers seeds of alpine plants beside mountain streams.