RIP: Barbara Brown

The Concord Monitor recently carried the following obituary, and their headline writer apparently thought the most significant events in her life occurred 30 years ago:
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080927/NOCOMMENTING/809270357

Since Barbara finished the WNH4k in 1978 and did less hiking thereafter, there may be nobody reading this who met her. While she was nowhere close to the first woman to complete the WNH4k (Miriam Underhill et al preceded her by nearly 20 years), a well-known 4k committee member talked of Barbara as perhaps the first woman who did not have a particular male companion on her hikes but put together a string of club and adhoc hikes. (Of course, there are now women who have hiked them all solo but due to trail-breaking issues there were few solo winter hikers in the '70s.)

One of her more famous experiences was breaking her leg after an impromptu slip going down the Owls Head slide, and walking out on it.

RoySwkr said:

The Concord Monitor recently carried the following obituary, and their headline writer apparently thought the most significant events in her life occurred 30 years ago:
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080927/NOCOMMENTING/809270357

....4k committee member talked of Barbara as perhaps the first woman who did not have a particular male companion on her hikes

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I'm always amused by these discoveries of "first" women. Google "manless climbing" and you'll find one person claiming that Underhill was the first woman to undertake "manless climbs" in the '40s, someone else will claim that O'Brien did so in the '20s, and so forth. But read around enough generally and you'll find that "first" woman is a naive concept. I recall one 19th c. discussion of climbing Kinsman, I think, when there were no viewscapes. Women remark that it was easier to climb a tree in skirts and grab the view when these hikes were manless. I'll bet cave women said something similar. As progressivists, we always like to think that it is our our era that has liberated women.

Waumbek said:

Google "manless climbing" and you'll find one person claiming that Underhill was the first woman to undertake "manless climbs" in the '40s, someone else will claim that O'Brien did so in the '20s, and so forth.

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Note that Underhill & O'Brien are likely the same person, and her book gives the exact date of her first "manless climb" which she did not claim to be the first by anybody. She used this phrase to refer to technical routes in the Alps.

Waumbek said:

But read around enough generally and you'll find that "first" woman is a naive concept.

Click to expand...

While we'll never know who was the first person to climb a particular peak or even a group such as the Kinsman Range, once you get into a longer list over a wider area it's unlikely any primitive person visited them all. It's fairly safe to say that Underhill was the first woman to finish the WNH4K as cave women would not have had the list

As for Brown, I'm not sure how much research the speaker had done or whether the remark was off-the-cuff. Perhaps there were women who knew about the winter 4k Club yet didn't report a completion, but the list of known female finishers before her was fairly slim, the 4k committee probably knew most or all of them personally and the others would have listed companions on their applications.

To hike "without a man" back then was a very big deal.
I started hiking solo (mostly) with my dogs in the late 60's and people were truly appalled. I bet she got more than one derogatory comment about her escapades. I certainly did.
Women definitely had "their place" and you were expected to fit the mold. Then came the insurrection and not a minute too soon. I am very proud to have made my contribution much to the dismay and horror of my elders.
There are still those who question women going off into the woods (and engaging in other similar activites) on their own but it does not come close to what we independent thinkers were subjected to years ago.
Babara Brown, may you rest in peace. You did great!

"Lord, we ain't what we wanna be, we ain't what we oughta be, and we ain't what we gonna be, but thank you Lord, we ain't what we wuz. "
- Prayer of a Freed Slave


Maddy

I remember taking a "road trip" back in the mid-70's and I wore a "man's" (my brother's) baseball cap and tucked my long hair up under it so I would not be "bothered" when I was travelling alone in my VW Beetle. I also remember in the same time period being one of just a few "girls" who rode in New England cross-country motorcycle competition (Enduros). Times have changed a few of the old stereotypes, thankfully.

RoySwkr said:

Note that Underhill & O'Brien are likely the same person, and her book gives the exact date of her first "manless climb" which she did not claim to be the first by anybody. She used this phrase to refer to technical routes in the Alps.

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That's the point about progessivism. Others (google them), not Underhill/OBrien, want to locate the "first" woman and thereby reassure ourselves that our modern era must be better to women than any previous era.

RoySwkr said:

While we'll never know who was the first person to climb a particular peak or even a group such as the Kinsman Range, once you get into a longer list over a wider area it's unlikely any primitive person visited them all. It's fairly safe to say that Underhill was the first woman to finish the WNH4K as cave women would not have had the list

Click to expand...

Again, you prove the point about the progressivist impulse.