No Magic Helicopter. Carol PhD Masheter
swimmer by the time I was 8 years old. Remembering my terrified thrashing in the deep end of the local pool earlier that summer, I made plans to become a better swimmer.
Finally doctors allowed me to leave my bed for the first time in weeks. Wearing heavy corrective shoes, I shuffled clumsily a few feet from my hospital bed and toppled into the arms of a nurse. I was weak, the arches in my feet were flat, and my back swayed alarmingly, but I could walk. I had escaped paralysis, as had my sister. At the time, I did not realize how fortunate I was. I was just really glad to get out of that cursed bed.
Back at home in Southern California, I did physical therapy every evening in the living room under my parents’ supervision. I picked up marbles with my toes, until my feet cramped. I squeezed a nickel between my buttocks, until my back ached. I did sit ups, until I could do no more. I had to wear heavy leather corrective shoes, while my friends wore sneakers and seemed to run like the wind.
My parents were afraid I would injure my weakened back, so they forbad me to lift the garage door to get my bike. When no one was looking, I would sneak outside and lift the heavy door like a giant barbell as many times as I could before grabbing my bike and peddling around the neighborhood. When my parents caught me, their disapproval hurt and their spankings stung, but I was determined not to be weak. If there were any silver linings to having polio, they were this early determination to be strong and the dream of doing something extraordinary. Why I reacted this way and did not accept a role of being “weak” or “sick” is still a mystery to me.
Polio, daily exercises, and corrective shoes were not the only things that set me apart. In the 1950s and 1960s rich girls went to finishing school to learn how to carry a suitcase, so their muscles would not show. I was more interested in riding horses and finishing first in school foot races. I wanted muscles, and I wanted them to show. Though I was more active than most kids my age and earned good grades in school, I was terribly shy. I had acne starting at age 9 and was painfully self-conscious about it. Selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, leaving fliers on people’s porches for my mother’s real estate business, and even answering the family telephone were agony. As a teenager, when my father dropped me off at the Methodist church for dances, I hid all evening in the bushes outside the social hall to avoid being asked to dance.
While other kids my age were going nuts over Elvis Presley, I fell in love with classical music. As a young teen, I dreamed of becoming a concert pianist and traveling the world to perform pieces by Mozart, Vivaldi, and Chopin, a curious dream for someone as shy as I was. After the launch of Sputnik, my school advisors noticed my aptitude for science and encouraged me in that direction. I liked science as well as music. On weekends after my piano lesson, I would ride my bike three miles to the local library and read “Scientific American.” I dreamed of making great scientific discoveries. I had no shortage of grand ideas, but I was not very talented in either music or science. My earnest diligence made me just good enough to fuel my ambitious dreams.
On some Saturdays, two other unconventional girls and I persuaded one of our parents to get up early and drive us to the Irvine Ranch, which in the early 1960s was still undeveloped land. We would spend the entire day hiking through hills of tall sun-cured grass and live oak, dodging herds of range cattle and avoiding clumps of prickly pear cactus, while keeping our eyes open for rattle snakes. I loved hiking up to a view point and gazing over the rolling hills. I felt confident and strong, away from the traffic, noise, and smog of where I lived, away from mean-spirited classmates who teased me about my acne.
Mary Tamara Utens, one of my hiking friends, showed me her older brother’s Eddie Bauer catalogs. In the 1960’s Eddie Bauer specialized in expedition down sleeping bags and clothing. I marveled at the pictures of mountaineers standing on snowy summits wearing puffy parkas, mountaineering boots, and crampons (metal spikes that mountaineers strap onto the soles of their boots to grip ice and hard snow). Climbing big mountains seemed really cool but completely out of reach for me. Surely only world-class mountaineers climbed such mountains, not awkward pimply teenage girls like me.
A Phoenix From Ashes
The busy-ness of life pushed the Eddie Bauer pictures of mountains to the back of my mind for awhile. Becoming a scientist seemed like a more realistic career plan than becoming a concert pianist. In 1968 I graduated from UCLA in chemistry and accepted a job as a research chemist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. I had never been further east than Arkansas, and though still painfully shy, I was eager to explore life as a newly launched adult. With my first paychecks I bought a Kelty external frame backpack and a down sleeping bag. At the apartment I shared with two other young women, I tested the sleeping bag in my unheated attic bedroom. After shivering inside the bag for the first 15 minutes to warm it up, it never failed me, even when temperatures dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Emboldened, I did several backpack trips with the Sierra Club. I loved backpacking in wilderness and climbing peaks in the Sierras and the Rockies. As much as I enjoyed living in central Connecticut with its pretty patchwork of fields, forests, towns, and cities, I lived for those annual backpack trips in the rugged mountains of the West.
I tried climbing even higher mountains. In 1972, I went to East Africa and climbed high on Mt. Kenya. Unlike the triumphant joy I had felt on previous summits in the Rockies and Sierras, on Point Lenana at 16,355 feet elevation, I experienced tunnel vision, lassitude, and a terrible headache. Later I learned these are the classic symptoms of moderate altitude sickness, probably exacerbated by dehydration due to a nasty case of travelers’ diarrhea. Happily, I was able to descend from Point Lenana under my own power. A week later I climbed 3,000 feet higher to the crater rim of Mt. Kilimanjaro by the Marangu Route. Though I did not experience symptoms as intense as those on Point Lenana, I still felt dull, sick, and tired. I was glad to have tried both mountains, but the climbs were cold and joyless.
Hiking up big mountains was only one of my youthful explorations. I pushed myself to overcome my shyness and dated. I fell in love with a guy who did not feel the same way about me. I learned to scuba dive, so I could dive with my next boyfriend. He also was less involved with me than I was with him, a pattern that I would repeat several times with other men. Perhaps I felt more in control as the pursuer than the pursued. Between failed relationships, I drove my VW beetle up the then unpaved Alcan Highway and explored parts of Alaska. I raised and trained Morgan horses. I trained for and ran the Boston Marathon as a qualified runner. Some of these experiences were fun and rewarding. Others were painful. They all helped me figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life.
After a dozen years of working at universities as a research chemist, I decided to change careers. Though I loved research, I was not setting the world on fire as a scientist and wanted to get into something more people related. My childhood fantasy of saving a drowning swimmer had evolved into wanting to be some kind of healer or teacher. I wanted to help people more directly than working in a lab. In the 1980s I earned a masters degree in marriage and family therapy then a doctorate from the University of Connecticut in Storrs. In 1988 I accepted a tenure track position at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The department that hired me was forced to merge with another department and expected me to publish in nutritional sciences instead of the area of my graduate work. I knew I needed to find a better professional fit.
Two years later I accepted another tenure track position at the University of Utah in Salt Lake. I settled into the life of an assistant professor, teaching classes, doing research, and applying for research grants. I had moved to Salt Lake to work, but I soon discovered the nearby mountains. I joined the Wasatch Mountain Club, a local outdoor club, and hiked with other members on the weekends. I met a guy who liked nerdy outdoorsy women like me. He taught me to rock climb and backcountry ski. We enjoyed talking about science and seemed to “get” each other. We became a couple.
My career bloomed. I published sole-author papers in the top peer-review publications in my field. Several times I was a finalist for my college’s superior teaching award. I seemed to be on my way to doing something extraordinary, building a legacy as an innovative researcher and a respected teacher. At last, in my 40s, I seemed to have found my life’s work and my life partner. Better late than never.
In 1995 a university colleague and fellow Wasatch Mountain Club member, Bill Thompson, summited Cho Oyu, whose name means