Izzy Bird, goodbyes
December 23, 2020
Isabella is saying her goodbyes to those in Estes Park and will soon leave Colorado.
“The last evening came… no woman will be seen in the park until next May.”
Lyman* suspects that by that time, “‘we shall be little better than brutes, in our manners at least.’ I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men both on sea and land during the last two years,** and the more important I think the ‘mission’ of every quiet refined, self-respecting woman — the more mistakes I think those who would forfeit it by noise self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power.”
Which is an interesting sentiment, that women must stand in for religion in all of the spaces where it doesn’t already hold sway. And by religion, of course, she means Christianity.
Soon enough, the last morning came.
“I cleaned up my room and sat at the window watching the red and gold of one of the most glorious of winter sunrises, and the slow lighting-up of one peak after another. I have written that this scenery is not lovable, but I love it.”
* The young man who eats everything and plagiarizes
** This trip is on the tail end of her journey to Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii.
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