It wasn’t uncommon for early women explorers to have a taste for solitude. Take Marianne North, the Englishwoman who in the 1800s circumnavigated the globe unaccompanied, spending thirteen years traveling and skirting Victorian convention.

Her paintings of flowers and landscapes hang at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, outside central London.

In her autobiography she recounts her travels, which she didn’t begin until she was forty.

In Nainital in the Himalayas in India’s Uttarakhand state, she liked sitting in the sun.

In Philadelphia, she walked the parks and Zoological Gardens enjoying idle days.

In the Bunya Mountains of Queensland, Australia, she said she enjoyed “my entire solitude through the grand forest alone.” Today, a genus of tree and several plant species are named for her.**

You can see North’s work here: https://www.kew.org/mng/gallery/

**Rosenbloom, Stephanie. Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude, Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.