Women Did It Better: Mountain Climbing

By Zoe Archer

Mountains have been luring men for centuries, if not millennia. A man sees a giant, intimidating mountain, and he longs to climb it and prove his mastery over nature. But the need to conquer mountains does not belong to men alone. As the sport of mountaineering developed during the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, women looked up at these massive natural structures and thought, "Why not me, too?"

Even though mountains provided these female climbers with plenty of obstacles, the greater risks often came on a social and societal level. Climbing mountains was not "respectable," requiring physical and emotional strength, immodest clothing, and a desire to prove that women were just as capable as men.

Henriette d'Angeville (1794-1871) was the first woman to ever climb Mont Blanc. She was given the nickname "La Fiancée du Mont Blanc," and was meanly said to love the mountain because, as a spinster, she had no one else to love. She scaled Mont Blanc for the first time in 1838 after undergoing rigorous comprehensive training. There was no ascribed mountaineering clothing for women, so d'Angeville work red flannel underwear, woolen stockings on top of silk stockings, tweed, flannel-lined knickerbockers, a fur hat, a straw hat, a velvet mask, a veil, a fur-lined pelisse and green spectacles. When d'Angeville reached the summit, she drank a toast to the Comte de Paris and then released a carrier pigeon to announce her victory.

Another celebrated female climber was Isabella Bird (1831-1904). Bird did not begin her career as an adventurer until she was forty one years old, when persistent illness took her from Britain to Australia in search of a better climate. Australia didn't improve her health, but she next voyaged to the Sandwich Islands (later known as Hawai'i). Here, Bird's health underwent a dramatic improvement, and she climbed Mauna Loa, the world's largest volcano at 13,650 feet.

Newly invigorated, Bird traveled to the Rocky Mountains in 1873. She lived for several years in the wilderness of Estes Park and had a (possibly romantic) relationship with a trapper called Rocky Mountain Jim. During her time in the Rockies, Bird wrote many letters to her sister, which were published in 1879. These detailed her hardy mountain life and her numerous climbing expeditions. She climbed the 14,255 feet high Long's Peak, and then went on to travel to and write about such far-flung places as Japan, the Malay Peninsula, Persia, Tibet, Korea, Sinai, China and Morocco. Clearly, bad heath never regained its hold on her.

The dashing Elizabeth Le Blond, née Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (1861-1934), was the daughter of a baronet. Her upper class background made her an even less likely candidate for becoming a mountaineer, and her family heartily disapproved of her unconventional climbing mania. Like Bird, Le Blond first traveled to the mountains for heath reasons, and insisted that, at the time, she knew nothing about mountaineering, nor did the sport interest her at all.

That lack of interest did not last long, and she made many ascents of the Alps, wearing breeches under her skirt. As she neared the higher parts of the mountains, she would remove the skirt, but always put it back on before returning from her expeditions. Le Blond founded the Ladies' Alpine Club in 1907 and became their first president. She also made numerous films of life in the Alps and was one of the first female filmmakers to garner attention for her work.

There were American female mountaineers, such as Fanny Bullock Workman (18-59-1925), who made ascents of the Himalayas, and Annie Peck (1850-1935) climbed in Peru and Bolivia. Miriam O'Brien Underhill (1898-1976; pictured) was considered for years to be the best American female climber, and she organized and led "manless" climbs: all-women mountain climbing expeditions. The Australian Freda du Faur (1882-1935) was the first female mountaineer to climb Mount Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain. Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was not only a known adventurer and explorer, but a mountaineer, as well, and Miriam Underhill replicated many of Bell's climbs in the Alps.

These women braved natural threats and social scorn. They did it because they loved the mountains. They loved freedom, and the liberty to push themselves to the very edge of their physical and emotional capacity, rather than sit safely, decorously, in a parlor.

Perhaps the best symbol of why women climbed mountains--and why they continue to do so today--can be seen in this photo of Fanny Bullock Workman. In it, she stands atop a mountain in the Karakorum range, brandishing a sign that reads: VOTES FOR WOMEN.

Greatest Hits: San Francisco in Flames

By Elizabeth Lane

Thursday, April 18, 1906, 5:12 a.m.

San Francisco, the Paris of the West, was just awakening to a new day when disaster struck. The animals sensed it first--dogs barking, horses shifting and whinnying. Then, as a distant rumbling rose to a deafening roar, the quake thundered through the city.

Witnesses described how they could actually see the quake coming. "The whole street was undulating," police officer Jesse Cook recalled. "It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, billowing as they came."

The first shock lasted forty seconds, followed by a brief silence and another twenty-five second shock--little more than a minute in all. But to the million Californians who felt it, the quake seemed to last forever. The heaving, cracking earth toppled chimneys and towers, splintered rows of frame houses, twisted steel rails, bridges and pipelines. People and animals were crushed by collapsing buildings and falling brick walls.

In the silence that followed, survivors poured into the streets, gaping in horror at the damage. The scene that met their dazed eyes looked like the end of the world. But the worst was yet to come.

Fueled by broken gas mains, fires began to flare in the city. San Francisco's superbly trained firefighting crews, the best in the nation, rushed to do what they could. But the odds were stacked against them. Water was in short supply, the water mains broken, the cisterns in such poor condition that many of them were empty. And their beloved chief, Dennis Sullivan, who had trained and led his crews for years and who knew more about fighting fires than anyone in the city, lay dying in an emergency hospital, mortally injured in the quake.

Most of the structures in San Francisco, especially in the vast working class neighborhoods, were made of wood. They burned like tinder. One of the worst blazes, known as the Ham and Eggs Fire, was started when a woman lit her stove to cook breakfast. Soon much of the city was ablaze. The heroic firemen were driven back as fire swept toward the towering office buildings and hotels in the downtown area.

The wealthier neighborhoods had suffered little damage from the quake because they were built on solid rock. Now, with water gone, the military commander, General Funston, ordered that many of these homes be dynamited by the army to create firebreaks. Unfortunately the one man who knew how to use dynamite in fighting fires--Chief Sullivan--was gone. As a result, many buildings were blown up unnecessarily, and some fires were even started by the dynamite.

By that afternoon the downtown area was on fire, its tall buildings going up like torches. People were leaving the city by the thousands, burdened with their most precious possessions. Some were herded to refugee centers set up in the parks and in the Presidio, where the military base was located. Some took the long road south, out of the city. Others trooped toward the waterfront--saved by the navy fireboat crews--and lined up for the ferry to Oakland. From the safety of the water they looked back on a city ablaze from horizon to horizon.

The fire raged for three days. By the time the Saturday evening rain dampened the ashes, 490 blocks, totaling 2831 acres, had been burned and more than 450 lives had been lost.

But the spirit of San Francisco was undaunted. Within days, aid was pouring in, and the cleanup and rebuilding had started. The city was on its way to becoming even greater than before.

My April Harlequin Historical HIS SUBSTITUTE BRIDE, is set against the backdrop of 1906 San Francisco in the last days before the quake and fire. It's a story of devotion, danger and sacrifice. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Greatest Hits: Great Storm of 1703

By Lisa Marie Wilkinson

"No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it." -- Daniel Defoe

The southern part of Britain was devastated by the most catastrophic storm it had experienced in five hundred years on November 26–27, 1703. Believed to be a revitalized Atlantic hurricane, the storm began as a series of gales earlier in November, and brought with it a prolonged period of unseasonably warm weather and high seas.

A warm front from the hurricane moved from the West Indies, traveled along the coast of Florida, and swept into the Atlantic prior to reaching England. The warm front collided with cold air, creating wind speeds estimated at over 120 miles per hour, and establishing conditions for a tempest that would peak during a six- to eight-hour period beginning at midnight on November 26. Although very little rain was reported, strong winds and a North Sea surge elevated tides by nearly eight feet, causing severe flooding.

There was significant loss of life. On land in England and Wales alone, collapsing roofs and chimneys killed more than one hundred and twenty people, and injured more than two hundred. Eighty more were drowned in marshland cottages surrounding the Severn Estuary.

Those at sea during the storm fared even worse. It is estimated that between eight and fifteen thousand people lost their lives along the coast and in over one hundred reported shipwrecks at sea.


Britain was at war and three fleets were assembled to aid the King of Spain against the French. By dawn, the majority of the vessels were destroyed, and fifteen hundred seamen had lost their lives. Twelve warships with thirteen hundred men were lost while still within sight of land. On the Thames, hundreds of ships were driven into each other in the Pool, the section downstream from London Bridge.


The Eddystone Lighthouse, in the direct path of the storm when the hurricane was at its most powerful, was destroyed. Its designer and builder, Henry Winstanley, was working on the structure at the time, and he was swept away with his creation.

No segment of the population was untouched. It was reported that Queen Anne stood at a window and watched as the trees in St. James's Park were violently uprooted by the force of the wind. She was forced to take refuge in a cellar when falling chimney stacks and a partial roof collapse damaged St. James Palace. The bodies of the bishop of Bath and Wells and his sister were discovered amid the ruins of their palace.

Property losses estimated at £6 million exceeded the £4 million loss suffered as a result of the Great Fire of London in 1666. In and around London alone, two thousand chimney stacks were blown down, and over a hundred church steeples in the capital were damaged. The heavy lead lining on the roof of Westminster Abbey was lifted and tossed some distance from the building.

All over southern England, streets were covered with tiles and slates. Rural village causeways and paved London roads alike were buried in slates and tiles from demolished buildings; even on hard ground they amassed to a depth of as much as eight inches. More than eight hundred houses were blown away or destroyed by the collapse of a central chimney stack. The majority of the houses left standing were partly or completely stripped of roof tiles.

Windmills, common structures at the time, were particularly vulnerable. More than four hundred windmills were destroyed. Many burned to the ground after their cloth sails rotated at such speed that friction led to fire. Millions of trees were uprooted or damaged. In the county of Kent, over a thousand barns and outhouses were destroyed. There were reports of men and animals being lifted into the air by the force of the wind. Tens of thousands of sheep and cattle were lost.

Restoration would prove to be slow and costly. The day following the storm, in one of the first recorded instances of price gouging, the price of tiles jumped from twenty-one shillings per thousand to one hundred and twenty shillings per thousand. English merchants were hard-pressed to keep a ready supply on hand; many had suffered the loss of company ships whose cargo holds had been burgeoning with goods.

The storm would remain in the collective consciousness of the British people as "The Great Storm" for many years to come.

Greatest Hits: When Continents Meet

By Michelle Styles

Iceland is one of the most geographically interesting places on the planet. Besides, the thermal springs, the glaciers, and the volcanoes, it boasts of a land-based rift valley. A rift valley is formed when two continental plates are physically tearing apart. Mostly this happens in one of the world's oceans, but in Iceland, the Eurasian and the North American plates are moving apart and have created a rift valley at Thingvellir.

The region around Thingvellir is an other-worldly landscape, where ropes of lava cut through the walls of the valley. Two great rock mountains--Hrafnabjorg and Armannsfell, where the mythical guardian of the region, Armann Dalmannsson, is supposed to dwell--rise above the valley. It looks as if nothing ever changes. Nature at one of its most majestic. However, every year the plates continue to drift apart by approximately 1.5 cm. This means that the valley floor is constantly changing, generally dropping by a few millimeters each year. In 1789 after an earthquake, the floor dropped by half a meter.

For Icelanders, it is hard to underestimate the historical importance of Thingvellir as it is where the Icelandic chieftains or godar first met to form the Althing or General Assembly. One man was elected as the lawspeaker. The great Icelandic poet, Snorri Snorrisson served as the law speaker in the 12th century, for example.

The Althing was held for two weeks every summer, and everyone who could attend did so. They lived in tented camps called buds and disputes were settled, laws given and democracy flourished. In the year 1000, it was here that Christainty was proclaimed as the national religion.

As various Icelandic sagas make clear, the Althing did not necessarily posses the power to enforce its laws, and sometimes, such as in Njal's saga, the disputes led to bloody feuds. Public executions began to take place in the 16th century. For example in the pools of Oxara, women convicted of witchcraft or sexual offences were drowned.

The last Althing met in 1798 in Thingvellir and was replaced by a national court and parliament in Reykjavik (also now called the Althing), but despite the move, the valley has never been forgotten. It served to inspire poets as well as the nationalist movement in the nineteenth century. When Iceland was granted its independence from Denmark in 1944, the declaration was read out at the historic site of the Althing in Thingvellir.

Today, it is a popular tourist destination and many come to marvel at Nature's power. But to Icelanders, it also represents the soul of their nation.

Humans in Nature: City Parks

By Vicki Gaia

It seems when we live within steel and cement, we need to a place where we can escape and just breathe. Parks have interesting histories. During major eras, parks have served beyond being pleasure playgrounds.

Every major city has it's city park--a natural landscape for the residents where the traffic noise dims, life slows down and a person can think beyond the mundane daily tasks that takes up one's life. Nature feeds the creative soul of humanity. We cannot live in a world separated from Earth's bountiful nature.

London is amazing for all the green belts scattered throughout the great metropolis. Hyde Park, once Henry VIII's hunting ground, covers 350 acres. On any given day, you see horseback riders, joggers, people picnicking to capture the rare sunshine.

During WWII, statues were replaced by anti-aircraft guns. One could hear the ack-ack fire from the park during the terrifying Blitz. The park transformed in wartime to serve the needs of Londoners besides being a place of escape.

Royal Parks

New York has its Central Park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux in 1853-1878. A Victorian landmark, it became the prototype of the city park movement that spread throughout Victorian America. Families could stroll along the trees, meadows and waterways, listen to concerts and go boating.

Olmstead believed pleasure parks were necessary, "in a direct remedial way to enable men to better resist the harmful influences of ordinary town life and to recover what they lose from them."

The practical purpose of a city park was to prevent the spreading of infectious diseases, curb alcoholism, promote civic pride and control the 'masses' from getting out of control.

Central Park

Golden Gate Park is one of San Francisco's crown jewels. You have the untamed wild beauty mixed with manicured landscapes dotted with museums, botanical gardens and a Japanese Tea garden. I've spent many afternoons in the park, listening to music, visiting an art exhibit, hiking the trails through Eucalyptus groves.

During the Sixties, it was the 'in place' to hang out. Several famous rock bands played for free. The Human Be-In, billed The Gathering of the Tribes in "a union of love and activism," took place in the park. It was 1967, the Summer of Love. The quintessence SF bands, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead rocked the crowd. Allen Ginsberg sang alone, and Timothy Leary told everyone to "turn on, tune in, and drop out!"

National Golden Gate Recreation Area

Humans in Nature: The Great Storm of 1703

By Lisa Marie Wilkinson

"No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it." -- Daniel Defoe

The southern part of Britain was devastated by the most catastrophic storm it had experienced in five hundred years on November 26–27, 1703. Believed to be a revitalized Atlantic hurricane, the storm began as a series of gales earlier in November, and brought with it a prolonged period of unseasonably warm weather and high seas.

A warm front from the hurricane moved from the West Indies, traveled along the coast of Florida, and swept into the Atlantic prior to reaching England. The warm front collided with cold air, creating wind speeds estimated at over 120 miles per hour, and establishing conditions for a tempest that would peak during a six- to eight-hour period beginning at midnight on November 26. Although very little rain was reported, strong winds and a North Sea surge elevated tides by nearly eight feet, causing severe flooding.

There was significant loss of life. On land in England and Wales alone, collapsing roofs and chimneys killed more than one hundred and twenty people, and injured more than two hundred. Eighty more were drowned in marshland cottages surrounding the Severn Estuary.

Those at sea during the storm fared even worse. It is estimated that between eight and fifteen thousand people lost their lives along the coast and in over one hundred reported shipwrecks at sea.


Britain was at war and three fleets were assembled to aid the King of Spain against the French. By dawn, the majority of the vessels were destroyed, and fifteen hundred seamen had lost their lives. Twelve warships with thirteen hundred men were lost while still within sight of land. On the Thames, hundreds of ships were driven into each other in the Pool, the section downstream from London Bridge.


The Eddystone Lighthouse, in the direct path of the storm when the hurricane was at its most powerful, was destroyed. Its designer and builder, Henry Winstanley, was working on the structure at the time, and he was swept away with his creation.

No segment of the population was untouched. It was reported that Queen Anne stood at a window and watched as the trees in St. James's Park were violently uprooted by the force of the wind. She was forced to take refuge in a cellar when falling chimney stacks and a partial roof collapse damaged St. James Palace. The bodies of the bishop of Bath and Wells and his sister were discovered amid the ruins of their palace.

Property losses estimated at £6 million exceeded the £4 million loss suffered as a result of the Great Fire of London in 1666. In and around London alone, two thousand chimney stacks were blown down, and over a hundred church steeples in the capital were damaged. The heavy lead lining on the roof of Westminster Abbey was lifted and tossed some distance from the building.

All over southern England, streets were covered with tiles and slates. Rural village causeways and paved London roads alike were buried in slates and tiles from demolished buildings; even on hard ground they amassed to a depth of as much as eight inches. More than eight hundred houses were blown away or destroyed by the collapse of a central chimney stack. The majority of the houses left standing were partly or completely stripped of roof tiles.

Windmills, common structures at the time, were particularly vulnerable. More than four hundred windmills were destroyed. Many burned to the ground after their cloth sails rotated at such speed that friction led to fire. Millions of trees were uprooted or damaged. In the county of Kent, over a thousand barns and outhouses were destroyed. There were reports of men and animals being lifted into the air by the force of the wind. Tens of thousands of sheep and cattle were lost.

Restoration would prove to be slow and costly. The day following the storm, in one of the first recorded instances of price gouging, the price of tiles jumped from twenty-one shillings per thousand to one hundred and twenty shillings per thousand. English merchants were hard-pressed to keep a ready supply on hand; many had suffered the loss of company ships whose cargo holds had been burgeoning with goods.

The storm would remain in the collective consciousness of the British people as "The Great Storm" for many years to come.

Humans in Nature: San Francisco in Flames

By Elizabeth Lane

Thursday, April 18, 1906, 5:12 a.m.

San Francisco, the Paris of the West, was just awakening to a new day when disaster struck. The animals sensed it first--dogs barking, horses shifting and whinnying. Then, as a distant rumbling rose to a deafening roar, the quake thundered through the city.

Witnesses described how they could actually see the quake coming. "The whole street was undulating," police officer Jesse Cook recalled. "It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, billowing as they came."

The first shock lasted forty seconds, followed by a brief silence and another twenty-five second shock--little more than a minute in all. But to the million Californians who felt it, the quake seemed to last forever. The heaving, cracking earth toppled chimneys and towers, splintered rows of frame houses, twisted steel rails, bridges and pipelines. People and animals were crushed by collapsing buildings and falling brick walls.

In the silence that followed, survivors poured into the streets, gaping in horror at the damage. The scene that met their dazed eyes looked like the end of the world. But the worst was yet to come.

Fueled by broken gas mains, fires began to flare in the city. San Francisco's superbly trained firefighting crews, the best in the nation, rushed to do what they could. But the odds were stacked against them. Water was in short supply, the water mains broken, the cisterns in such poor condition that many of them were empty. And their beloved chief, Dennis Sullivan, who had trained and led his crews for years and who knew more about fighting fires than anyone in the city, lay dying in an emergency hospital, mortally injured in the quake.

Most of the structures in San Francisco, especially in the vast working class neighborhoods, were made of wood. They burned like tinder. One of the worst blazes, known as the Ham and Eggs Fire, was started when a woman lit her stove to cook breakfast. Soon much of the city was ablaze. The heroic firemen were driven back as fire swept toward the towering office buildings and hotels in the downtown area.

The wealthier neighborhoods had suffered little damage from the quake because they were built on solid rock. Now, with water gone, the military commander, General Funston, ordered that many of these homes be dynamited by the army to create firebreaks. Unfortunately the one man who knew how to use dynamite in fighting fires--Chief Sullivan--was gone. As a result, many buildings were blown up unnecessarily, and some fires were even started by the dynamite.

By that afternoon the downtown area was on fire, its tall buildings going up like torches. People were leaving the city by the thousands, burdened with their most precious possessions. Some were herded to refugee centers set up in the parks and in the Presidio, where the military base was located. Some took the long road south, out of the city. Others trooped toward the waterfront--saved by the navy fireboat crews--and lined up for the ferry to Oakland. From the safety of the water they looked back on a city ablaze from horizon to horizon.

The fire raged for three days. By the time the Saturday evening rain dampened the ashes, 490 blocks, totaling 2831 acres, had been burned and more than 450 lives had been lost.

But the spirit of San Francisco was undaunted. Within days, aid was pouring in, and the cleanup and rebuilding had started. The city was on its way to becoming even greater than before.

My April Harlequin Historical HIS SUBSTITUTE BRIDE, is set against the backdrop of 1906 San Francisco in the last days before the quake and fire. It's a story of devotion, danger and sacrifice. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Humans in Nature: Travels on the Rhine

By Sandra Schwab

In 1795. Anne Radcliffe wrote about her journey along the Rhine:

Sometimes, as we approached a rocky point, we seemed going to plunge into the expanse of the water beyond; when, turning the sharp angle of the promontory, the road swept along an ample bay, where the rocks, receding formed an amphitheatre, [...] then [...] we saw the river beyond [...] assume the form of a lake, amidst wild and romantic landscapes."
Anne Radcliffe, Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany with a Return down the Rhine, 1795

Anne Radcliffe belonged to the first wave of Rhine tourists. During the Napoleonic Wars, travelling came more or less to a halt, but immediately afterwards the second wave of British tourists arrived on the banks of Father Rhine. There were so many of them that later in the century the writer Thomas Hood remarked:

It is a statistical fact that since 1814 an unknown number of persons have been more or less abroad, and of all the Countries in Christendom, never was there such a run as on the Banks of the Rhine. It was impossible to go into Society without meeting units, tens, hundreds, thousands of Rhenish tourists. What a donkey they deemed him who had not been to Assmannshausen!

One of the most popular, if not the most popular, literary text about a Rhine journey was Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. In Canto III, stanza XLVI, Byron writes:

...Maternal Nature! ...who teems like thee,
Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
There Harold gazes on a work divine
A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.

Byron goes on to describe the picturesque view of ruins and hills clothed with forest or vine. Some places he even lists by name:

The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of water broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scatter'd cities crowning these;
Whose far white walls along them shine..."

British tourists would drag a copy of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage along on their travels on the Rhine from then on, so they could trace Childe Harold's steps. This becomes obvious in the Shelleys' History of a Six Weeks Tour, from 1817:

The part of the Rhine down which we now glided, is that so beautifully described by Lord Byron in his third Canto of CHILDE HAROLD. We read these verses with delight, as they conjured before us these lovely scenes with the truth and vividness of painting, and with the exquisite addition of glowing language and warm imagination. We were carried down by a dangerously rapid current, and saw on either side of us hills covered with vines and trees, craggy cliffs crowned by desolate towers, and wooded islands, where picturesque ruins peeped from behind the foliage, and cast shadows of their forms on the troubled waters, which distorted without deforming them.

Mary Shelley also chose the Rhine as one of the settings of her 1818 gothic novel Frankenstein

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, ad of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of the precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible.

Apart from the writers, British painters, too, chose the Rhine and its legends as subjects for their art. Among artists were Turner and Waterhouse, and they, of course, made the sights and legends of the Rhine even more famous.

If you'd like to find out more about travels on the Rhine, check out the background information to CASTLE OF THE WOLF on Sandra's website.

Humans In Nature: When Continents Meet

By Michelle Styles

Iceland is one of the most geographically interesting places on the planet. Besides, the thermal springs, the glaciers, and the volcanoes, it boasts of a land-based rift valley. A rift valley is formed when two continental plates are physically tearing apart. Mostly this happens in one of the world's oceans, but in Iceland, the Eurasian and the North American plates are moving apart and have created a rift valley at Thingvellir.

The region around Thingvellir is an other-worldly landscape, where ropes of lava cut through the walls of the valley. Two great rock mountains--Hrafnabjorg and Armannsfell, where the mythical guardian of the region, Armann Dalmannsson, is supposed to dwell--rise above the valley. It looks as if nothing ever changes. Nature at one of its most majestic. However, every year the plates continue to drift apart by approximately 1.5 cm. This means that the valley floor is constantly changing, generally dropping by a few millimeters each year. In 1789 after an earthquake, the floor dropped by half a meter.

For Icelanders, it is hard to underestimate the historical importance of Thingvellir as it is where the Icelandic chieftains or godar first met to form the Althing or General Assembly. One man was elected as the lawspeaker. The great Icelandic poet, Snorri Snorrisson served as the law speaker in the 12th century, for example.

The Althing was held for two weeks every summer, and everyone who could attend did so. They lived in tented camps called buds and disputes were settled, laws given and democracy flourished. In the year 1000, it was here that Christainty was proclaimed as the national religion.

As various Icelandic sagas make clear, the Althing did not necessarily posses the power to enforce its laws, and sometimes, such as in Njal's saga, the disputes led to bloody feuds. Public executions began to take place in the 16th century. For example in the pools of Oxara, women convicted of witchcraft or sexual offences were drowned.

The last Althing met in 1798 in Thingvellir and was replaced by a national court and parliament in Reykjavik (also now called the Althing), but despite the move, the valley has never been forgotten. It served to inspire poets as well as the nationalist movement in the nineteenth century. When Iceland was granted its independence from Denmark in 1944, the declaration was read out at the historic site of the Althing in Thingvellir.

Today, it is a popular tourist destination and many come to marvel at Nature's power. But to Icelanders, it also represents the soul of their nation.

Humans in Nature: John Tradescant

By Erastes

I'm a keen gardener, and I'd often seen the genus Tradescantia on plants that I planted in my garden. I didn't know what that word meant for many years. I assumed it was from where the plants were from, or perhaps a particular thing about their genetics.


It wasn't until I read Philippa Gregory's Earthly Joys that I realised what it meant: it refers to the man who introduced these plants to the United Kingdom, John Tradescant.

There were actually two John Tradescants--The Elder and the Younger. They were both obsessive plantsmen and brilliant gardeners.

The Elder John rose to fame as head gardener to the Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House. An influential man at Court (Tradescant seems to hover around hugely influential men) and completely redesigned the gardens at Hatfield for the new house that Salisbury had built. These gardens were formal (unlike the broad sweeping "natural" landscapes that were later fashionable when Capability Brown came along) comprising mazes, knot gardens, water parterres and terraces.

But it wasn't just as a gardener that Tradescant became famous; he travelled widely, hugely widely for a simple gardener in the 17th century--Russia, the Levant, Algeria, Holland, France. Everywhere he went he bought, begged, borrowed seeds and seedlings, wrapped them up and transported them in huge numbers and brought them back to England. He was solely responsible for introducing the horse chestnut to England, bringing back six beautiful "conkers" and waiting years and years for them to grow, blossom and flower. It's hard to imagine, in a country where horse chestnuts are everywhere, that once people paid money to come and look at these odd trees.

John the Elder then went to work for another Court favourite, James I's good friend and confidant (and some would say lover, too) George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham, and it was here in Gregory's book that she rather bends the truth! Unfortunately, I can't see the handsome George going to bed with Tradescant, as he in reality looked like the man in his portrait at the head of this post, and not the gorgeous creature on the cover of her book. Still, it's a great book, full of wonderful gardening information and a tender love story that stomped my little heart to bits!

John's son, John the Younger, travelled even more widely than his father, going as far as the Americas, and continued to collect plants and seeds to bring back to England, plants such as the magnolia, the tulip tree, and plants we take for granted such as aster and phlox. They displayed their finds in their house in Lambeth and charged the public to view them in what they called "The Ark." John the Younger became head gardener to Charles I, survived the civil war and was buried beside his father in Lambeth.

Humans in Nature: Mount Washington

By Isabel Roman

Mount Washington is the highest peak in northeast United States, sits 6,288 feet above sea level, is home to the world's first cog railroad, and has the world's worst weather. A proven fact recorded on April 12, 1934 when the record for the highest wind gust directly measured on the Earth's surface was clocked at 231 mph (372 kph).

Don't believe me? I've gone up the railroad to the top of the mountain and it's bad. You can watch those crazy scientists (who live there) monitor the weather on their webcam. From the summit: Observation Deck, North View, West View.

Darby Field claimed to have climbed Mt. Washington in 1642. Dr. Cutler named the mountain in 1784. The Crawford Path, the oldest mountain hiking trail in America, was laid out in 1819 as a bridle path from Crawford Notch to the summit and has been in use ever since. Ethan Allen Crawford built a house on the summit in 1821, which lasted until a storm in 1826. I hope he had insurance.

The cog railroad (technically The Mount Washington Cog Railway) is the best train ride ever. In summer. With the windows closed to prevent soot in your eyes. I'd post my own pictures but I went in the 80s, and the hair...it's best left to the forgotten scrapbooks packed away.

Sylvester Marsh of Campton came up with the idea while climbing the mountain in 1857. His plan was promptly declared insane. Because why wouldn't you want to build a railroad up a mountain? (Please, don't say it...)

Equipment and materials were hauled by oxen 25 miles to Bretton Woods, and then another six miles through thick forest to the base of Mount Washington. On July 3, 1869, Old Peppersass became the first cog-driven train up the mountain.

The men who worked on the railroad decided to minimize their time getting to and from work so they invented the Devil's Shingle--not so much an invention as slide-boards that fit over the cog track. They were wide enough so the workers could sit on them with their tools. Made from wood, with iron as handles, they could literally slide down the mountain at speeds up to 100 mph. They made it down in about fifteen minutes; the record was 2:45. In 1906, the Devil's shingles were banned after the accidental death of an employee.

Still, it looks like a lot of fun!

Humans in Nature: Victory Gardens

By Delia DeLeest

Go green! Conserve our resources! Save the planet! Many people think these ideas are new, that recycling is modern and that the concept of reducing our use of consumer goods is a 21st century idea. They couldn't be more wrong. These ideas have been around forever, they just become more popular in cycles.

During WWII, people looked on their gardens, not as a cheap way to procure fresh vegetables but as their civic duty. In 1943, Americans planted over 20 million Victory Gardens, which supplied about one third of all the vegetables consumed in the country in that year. By producing their own vegetables, people freed up commercial food supplies for the troops both at home and overseas. When the public took care of themselves, they freed valuable resources to be shipped to brothers, sons and husbands fighting the good fight in Europe and the rest of the world.

It wasn't just the country folks planting gardens. Houses in town frequently sported front yards with grass dug up and replaced by turnips and potatoes. Balconies and window sills in the cities held pots of spinach, tomatoes and beans. Rooftops and vacant lots soon became lush gardens, taken over for the war effort. Gardening wasn't just a good idea; it became your civic duty. With the rationing of canned food in the war areas, a garden became a necessity. Portions of public places, such as Hyde Park in London and San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, were plowed up and planted with vegetables to provide an example for those on the home front. To not have a garden was plain unpatriotic.

There are still two examples of WWII Victory Gardens left, in Massachusetts and Minnesota, though the one in Minnesota is the only one to still focus solely on vegetables. The mass consumerism that took over the world after the war diminished any interest in self-sufficiency until the 'going green' movement began taking over in the late 1990s. Today, when people hear statistics such as how some food travels 1500 miles before it reaches the table, as well as the damage to health commercial pesticides may create, they are once again taking an interest in growing their own food--though now they are doing it for both personal and global advantages instead of as their patriotic duty.

Humans in Nature: Theodore Roosevelt, Conservationist

By Eliza Tucker

Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Riding trust buster American President, is renowned for his love of the outdoors and his legacy of environmental conservation still thrives today.

As a child, Roosevelt suffered from severe asthma, and was frequently ill. His parents were both tough and wise, and, once his health stabilized a little, decided to make sure young "Teedie" (as he was called then) spent much time out-of-doors, engaged in physical activity. To provide a place for him to remain active in poor weather, his father built a gymnasium in their home.

Roosevelt fell in love with outdoors, so much that, on his wedding trip to Europe with new bride Alice, he even climbed the Matterhorn. But when Alice and his mother died on the same day--Alice of liver failure after the delivery of their first daughter two days before; Mittie of typhoid--Teddy retreated into the wilderness, quite literally.

Roosevelt built a ranch in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, where he got to know the West for all its wonders and dangerous, and learned Western riding, ranching, and all it entailed. As a deputy sheriff, his skills increased. The winter storm of 1886-1887 took out most of the animals on his ranch, and so he returned to New York where he engaged in politics.

Roosevelt served on the New York City police board, then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Later he founded the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Spanish-American War in Cuba, then won the title of Governor of New York and finally Vice President under William McKinley. After McKinley's murder, Roosevelt stepped into the role as president, but he could not forget the things he loved: the outdoors, physical activity, nature and animals.

By his term as president at the turn of the twentieth century,

**Forests throughout the country were depleted; some estimates indicated that only about 20 percent of the original woodlands remained in 1900
**Much of the nation's farmland, particularly in the South and East, had been exhausted by overuse and was marginally productive
**Extractive industries such as oil, gas, and minerals were proceeding at an unfettered pace
**Water rights were increasingly coming under the control of private parties, who often operated without concern for flood control or the preservation of natural features.

--U-S-history.com

Roosevelt pushed legislation that would oversee the way America took care of its territory, and the 1902 Newlands Act brought the federal government into a position where it could better maintain and manage the nation's water.

In 1903, Roosevelt founded the National Bird Reserve, and later realized the extinction of American bison was near, and founded the American Bison Society. During his term, he set aside 194 million square miles for national parks and wildlife reserves.

Humans in Nature: The Big Hole

By Carrie Lofty

Until 2005, when scholars proved that the abandoned Jagersfontein mine was actually about 110 feet deeper, the Big Hole in Kimberely, South Africa was the largest pit ever dug by hand. The open-pit mine, established in 1871, attracted as many as 50,000 small time miners from all over the world until conglomerates founded by men such as Cecil Rhodes began to buy up shares and consolidate claims. By the time it closed in 1914, the Big Hole had yielded three tons of raw diamonds (2,720 kilos), and every single one of those diamonds was extracted using pick-axes, shovels and bare hands.

As with any discovery of rich natural resources, international players wanted a piece of the action. Major contenders for the African colonial land grab, including Britain, Germany, Portugal, and the Netherlands, became obsessed with what some called "the Diamond Crusade." Using a loophole in an existing treaty with the Griqua tribe, the British were able to repartition boundaries between Cape Colony and the Orange Free State in a move that made Kimberely's diamond-rich land property of the Queen. But the diamonds belonged to those who could best get at them.


As the hole got wider and deeper, miners were at risk of side collapses due to poor scaffolding or rain storms. No longer able to simply stroll to their claim and start digging, the miners and their supplies were lowered into the pit by a series of pulleys and cables. The deeper they got, the more costly to continue mining, which precipitated the push toward consolidation and mechanization.

Cecil Rhodes envisioned an African continent made British, with its populace taught to appreciate British values and customs. He also imagined a railroad that would stretch from Cape Town to Cairo, and his obsession needed funds. He eventually consolidated so many mining claims that he was able to buy out his chief rival, Barney Bernato, for more than five million pounds--the largest sum ever paid by check at that time. This created the De Beers monopoly which still hold tremendous sway over the diamond industry today.


By the time the mine closed in 1914, it had grown to 1500 feet wide (460 meters) and almost 500 feet deep. Upon seeing the mine for the first time, Winston Churchill said, "All for the vanity of women!" To which a woman in the crowd replied, "And the depravity of men!"

Water and debris now partially fill the mine, which has become known throughout the world by its designation as a World Heritage Site. You can read more about the tourist town that has since sprung up around the Big Hole on its website.