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The Lady and the Mountain Man:
Isabella Bird, Mountain Man Jim Nugent, and their Unlikely Friendship.
Twenty-three-year-old Platt Rogers and his friend, twenty-one-year- old Sylvester Downer, waited at the front entrance of a hotel in Longmont for the woman they promised to escort to Longs Peak. The two men hadn’t been in Colorado long. Rogers had recently graduated from Columbia Law School and Downer, a student at the same college, decided to go West and see the Rocky Mountains. They hadn’t planned to venture into the high country with anyone else. “…we were traveling light and free,” Rogers wrote of the experience years later, “and the presence of a woman would naturally operate as a restraint on our movements.”
The offer to add another body to the expedition was agreed upon only after they learned they would be paid for their trouble. “We consoled ourselves with the hope that she would prove young, beautiful, and vivacious,” Rogers later confessed. “Our hopes were dispelled when in the morning, Miss Bird appeared wearing bloomers, riding cowboy fashion, with a face and figure not corresponding to our ideals.”
Isabella’s outfit was one of the traditional Hawaiian riding dresses she usually wore for such an occasion. The pa’u, as it was called, was a voluminous skirt or sarong that was tucked in around the legs. When riding astride, the garment resembled wings. The dress was more for comfort than style. If the trip from Denver to Estes Park was any indication, Isabella anticipated the journey would be rough and at least wanted to feel at ease with what she was wearing. Rogers and Downer were taken aback because of her clothing and by her ride, a horse named Birdie which looked as though it was not strong enough to make the trip. When the two men asked Isabella about the stamina of the animal, she was quick to come to Birdie’s defense. She assured them he had the “cat like sure-footedness of a Hawaiian horse.” Isabella might have been confident her ride would not disappoint, but the young guides were not convinced her horse would withstand the trip. However, they didn’t argue the point. They simply loaded the supplies and ropes on their horses and a pack mule and started on the quest.
