9 Quotes from Female Explorers You Should Know
Female adventure seekers have explored land, ocean, and sky to quench their wanderlust and quell curiosity with worldly knowledge. Their accomplishments are all too often left out of the history books.
Among this list are women who have pioneered new lands and areas of study, women who have both defined and defied borders. These are names we should all know, names which should hold as much prestige as their male counterparts like Lawrence of Arabia or Lewis and Clark.
These nine extraordinary women adventurers deserve your attention.
Junko Tabei
Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given— it rises from your heart.
Junko Tabei was a Japanese mountaineer who is recognized as the first woman to summit Mount Everest and the first woman to reach the highest peak on every continent.
She also was an accomplished environmentalist, focusing her studies on the environmental damages caused by climbers and their abandoned waste on Mount Everest. As director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, Tabei worked to preserve mountain environments around the globe.
More on Junko Tabei: Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei
Freya Stark
This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in your imagination suddenly become part of the tangible world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers or parching dusty ways may lie between you; it is yours now for ever.
Freya Stark was a British-Italian explorer and travel writer who wrote dozens of books detailing her adventures in the Middle East
Establishing herself as a renown author, cartographer, and linguist; Stark was awarded the Founder’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. She travelled alone on several occassions into the western Iranian wilderness which, at that time, no westerner (man or woman) had ventured into before. There she found the fabled Valley of Assassins which she then chronicled in her book of the same name.
By Freya Stark: The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels
Ruth Dyar Mendenhall
Climbing is probably the most uncomfortable sport in the world. The mountaineer must admit that he is perpetually too cold or too hot, usually in rapid succession, sleepy, hungry, thirsty and exhausted— and of all discomforts, the bivouac, the enforced night without shelter, is probably the most acute. Still, the most manifestly unpleasant trips are, illogically, those remembered with the keenest pleasure.
Ruth Dyar Mendenhall was an American mountain climber who broke gender barriers by becoming one of the first female mount climbers and paving the way for all who have followed in her approaches.
She is credited with the first ascents of several peaks in the Sierra Nevada, including the southeast face of Mt. Whitney, as well as many other peaks throughout California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
Woman on the Rocks: The Mountaineering Letters of Ruth Dyar Mendenhall
Ida Pfeiffer
In exactly the same manner as the artist an invisible desire to paint, and the poet to give free course to his thoughts, so was I hurried away with an unconquerable wish to see the world. In my youth I dreamed of travelling— in my old age I find amusement in reflecting on what I have beheld.
Ida Pfeiffer was an Austrian mother and music teacher who took up traveling after she raised her two sons into self-sufficient men.
Choosing to travel alone and fearing the dangers of the world, Pfeiffer wrote her will before making her first adventure to the Holy Land. She caught the disease of the adventure seeker and from then made several trips around the world, journeying everywhere from China to India to South Africa to California and beyond. Ida Pfeiffer is celebrated as one of the first female explorers.
By Ida Pfeiffer: A Woman’s Journey Round the World
Sacagawea
Everything I do is for my people.
Sacagawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition thousands of miles across the Louisiana Territory to the Pacific Ocean.
Few of her own words were ever recorded, and the credit given to this woman will never be enough. With her newborn baby strapped to her back, Sacagawea guided the exploration and served as an interpreter, helping to map the newly acquired Western territories and establishing cultural contacts with Native American populations along the route.
More about Sacagawea: Who Was Sacagawea?
Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz
Grown people should be aware that sometimes in life is lonely. But during the trip I was not plagued by loneliness. I was not lonely, but alone. There’s a difference.
Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz is a Polish mariner who is the first woman to sail alone around the world.
She set off from the Canary Islands on February 28th, 1976, and returned on April 21st, 1978, circumnavigating the globe with over 31,166 nautical miles sailed in 401 days. Alone she survived the voyage and navigated her boat, the Mazurek, across the world’s oceans.
Amelia Earhart
Now and then women should do for themselves what men have already done—occasionally what men have not done—thereby establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women toward greater independence of thought and action. Some such consideration was a contributing reason for my wanting to do what I so much wanted to do.
Amelia Earhart was an American pilot and author who was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for her accomplishment.
Her attempt to circumnavigate the globe lives on in infamy as the mystery around her plane’s disappearance was never solved, but in life she accomplished much worth remembering. Earhart achieved many other flying firsts, including speed and altitude records. As an outspoken supporter of equal rights she helped form The Ninety-Nines (an organization for female pilots) and was a career counselor for women at Purdue University.
More on Ameliea Earhart: Who Was Amelia Earhart? (Who Was?)
Sophia Danenberg
Planning helps me to understand my where I am and make informed decisions. In mountaineering, I make very detailed, sometimes minute by minute plans. (Wake up at 5:00 am. Boil water at 5:15 am. Finish breakfast at 5:30 am. Leave tent at 6:00 am. Reach Point A by 7:30 am., etc.) However, I’m almost always off-plan. I make an initial plan and then constantly re-evaluate where I am and readjust as needed. If I reach a point where I can’t recover, I might need to abandon the plan rather than risk being in an unsafe situation, such as climbing after dark.
Sophia Danenberg is an American mountain climber who is known as the first black woman to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
Unintentionally becoming the first, Danenberg was surprised when she found out that her 2007 ascent was a historical achievement. She has said that there is a lack of role models for people of color in the climbing community, but that she is on the front end of a growing trend in America.
Gertrude Bell
The most degrading of human passions is the fear of death. It tears away the restraints and the conventions which alone make social life possible to man; it reveals the brute in him which underlies them all. In the desperate hand-to-hand struggle for life there is no element of nobility. He who is engaged upon it throws aside honor, he throws aside self-respect, he throws aside all that would make victory worth having – he asks for nothing but bare life.
Gertrude Bell was a British writer and archaeologist who fought for self-governing Middle Eastern states and outlined the political boundaries of modern Iraq after World War I.
After working to become the first woman to graduate in Modern History at Oxford with a first class honors degree, Bell went on to summit a number of peaks in the Alps before spending decades exploring the Middle East. She formed close relations with local tribes and governments over the years. She battled against her British contemporaries in support of a self-governing Middle East and led the charge to place King Faisal on the throne of Iraq.
By Gertrude Bell: The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria
Interested in more about Gertrude Bell? We’ve put together her Adventurer Profile for a more in-depth breakdown of her accomplishments. Gertrude Bell’s adventure from Jerusalem to the Ruins of Petra was also featured in the third episode of the Better Hiker podcast.
