Part IV: Joan Alone

It’s not uncommon for college roommates to become friends, although it doesn’t always happen; most of the time they learn to tolerate each other, then eventually go their separate ways. It hadn’t worked that way for me. Cat had become my best friend, in fact, my best friend ever, even considering when I had been Joe. As Joe, I had never even shared things with Cindy the way Cat and I had done.

For almost six years it had continued. We had shared clothes and boyfriends, we had shared classes and friends. We had shared hopes and dreams, along with adventures galore. We did things that few girls of our age would ever consider dreaming of doing, including the climbing and being donut dollies. Even the traveling around Europe, and the junior year abroad had not been common things for girls our age in those days, although they were becoming slightly more common.

Now it was gone, all gone.

Even before Cat’s wedding I had been feeling morose and lonely, and the ceremony only made it worse.

For the month between graduation and the wedding I mostly moped around home, trying to figure out what to do next. That didn’t mean I didn’t have ideas, because I did – it was just that I didn’t like any of them.

I briefly considered calling up Mrs. Oldfield at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington to see if she needed an experienced donut dolly in Vietnam again. But I didn’t want to do it without Cat, who had been able to keep me up during my bad days, just like I had done for her. Besides, somehow it felt like going backward, rather than forward. Along with that, even a quick look at the news told me that the US was pulling out of Vietnam, and it went without saying that the Red Cross would soon be ending their recreation programs there if they hadn’t done so already. As a result I didn’t make the phone call.

It would be fun to go out west and go climbing again, and while I didn’t have tons of money, I could at least consider it if I really watched my pennies – but I didn’t want to do it without Cat, or at least without a climbing and traveling companion. I knew no other woman in the country who climbed at her level who might be available. I had met a few in Europe who were close, but I didn’t have addresses or anything, and they were far away. I might consider going with a guy, if it was the right guy like Pat or Dick, who we had climbed with in the Wind Rivers and Colorado. I still had an address for Pat, but got no response when I wrote him a letter. Well before the wedding I had given up hope on that one, too.

What that left behind was to look for work. It was not necessarily impossible to find; after all, I had a brand new teaching certificate that I ought to be able to put to use somewhere. In the weeks after graduation, while I was waiting for the wedding to come, I put out all sorts of résumés and applications at schools mostly within driving distance of Simsville. I reasoned that if I stayed with the folks to save money, I could build up my funds to go do something else in the summers, at least for a while.

I even got hired – or at least, was offered jobs, which amounted to the same thing. Fortunately, I was balancing three offers at the same time, considering this one and that one, but I didn’t like any of them. None of them were very good in the first place, and when I thought about it I realized that I didn’t really want to teach school near home at all. I needed mountains, I needed clear, open skies – and I began to realize that I needed to get away from Cat and Steve so I wouldn’t be reminded of what I had lost.

So, while I kept the job offers open, by the time the wedding rolled around I had already decided to look elsewhere. The day after the wedding, while Cat and Steve were honeymooning somewhere, I put some clothes and camping gear into the Chevelle, threw in some climbing equipment in case I could find an easy solo climb or someone to climb with for a day or two, and headed west.

Colorado was my first stop, just because it was the first mountain state I came to. I went right to the state board of education office in Denver; I knew that they didn’t do the actual hiring, but maintained a list of open positions and people seeking them, so I figured I could pick up a few leads there.

It turned out that there were small school districts in remote areas looking for teachers and having trouble finding them. Districts located in mountain country usually had little trouble finding teachers, mostly because there were a lot of people like me who liked mountains. But there were others, in districts out on the plains, where finding a teacher could be a lot harder.

I won’t go into detail about all the running around I wound up doing, but after a few days I found myself sitting down with the superintendent of schools in Lancaster, Colorado.

Lancaster is a tiny little town on the plains of eastern Colorado not far from the Kansas border, on the edge of what had been the dust bowl nearly forty years before. The population of the whole county was only around two thousand, and the town itself only had about eight hundred; the population of both had been steadily shrinking since the dust bowl days, and it was likely that it would continue to shrink as the years went by. It got by mostly on dryland farming and ranching and it was not exactly the most prosperous place I had ever been in. There was the only high school in the whole county, although there was an outlying elementary school in those days.

There were few trees, except for those around town itself. There were no mountains around – it was all open prairie in every direction, with a big dome of sky overhead. At least there were good, climbable mountains a couple of hours’ drive to the west, which was a lot better than we had it around home.

The superintendent looked over my résumé, and we talked for a while. He was impressed by the fact that I had spent so much time in Europe, and, like a lot of people in rural areas, was even more impressed to discover that I had been willing to serve my country in Vietnam.

“Look,” he said after we’d talked for a while. “I have to tell you that we have a problem. We try to bring back kids who have grown up here, mostly because they understand a place like this, while people from back east often feel stifled here since it’s so remote. Let’s face it, there isn’t much to do here, and there’s even less if they don’t have family here. It can get pretty damn dull, and some people can’t take it.”

“I understand,” I told him, figuring that this whole thing had been a waste of time. “All I can say is that I’m used to spending dull times in uncomfortable circumstances. I may have just graduated from college, but I went the long way around to do it.”

“You certainly have,” he smiled. “What I’m really trying to tell you is that we have a kid from here who is still in college at the University of Northern Colorado. She wants to be a teacher and stay here, since she has family here. Her fiancé is also from a family here, and he plans on staying too. I can’t say that this job is earmarked for her, but it would be the ideal thing for her. The only problem is that it won’t be for two years.”

“I don’t see that as being a problem,” I told him. “From what little I know about this place, I think in two years I ought to be ready to move on somewhere else.”

“I know we can’t enforce it, but if you’re willing to go along with me voluntarily on this, I think I can say that we can offer you the position. I like your courage, and I like the idea that you can bring a little of the outside world to what really is a pretty isolated community.”

“Let’s just say I’m interested on that basis. I haven’t even looked at what the housing situation might be like, and that could be an issue.”

“It really shouldn’t be a problem. We have plenty of empty houses in this town. Some are in pretty good condition, and I’m sure there are people who would be willing to rent something to a new schoolteacher. Failing that, I’m pretty sure I can find a family who would be willing to let you room with them.”

We kicked it around for a while longer, but by the time I walked out of there I was a teacher in Lancaster High School, at a rate of pay that wasn’t bad under the circumstances. In the next day or so I found a small place to rent; I didn’t really want to live with a strange family if I could help it. The place was even partially furnished; a couple who had lived there had been forced to move to Denver to look for work, and they’d left a lot of their stuff behind.

I made a quick trip back to Simsville to pick up more of my things, and turned the loaded Chevelle back to eastern Colorado within a couple of days. I unloaded the car, spent a little time settling in, and then realized I still had more than two months before school started, so I reloaded the car with my climbing gear and camping equipment and headed for the mountains.

I did a lot of climbing in the next couple of months. Some of it was rock climbing where I could find a partner for the day, male or female. Some of it was solo mountain walking and occasionally backpack camping. During those two months I climbed about half of the Colorado “fourteen-thousanders,” mostly by myself, but occasionally tagging along with groups for the day. It was mostly peak-bagging, but it sated my desire for mountains to a tolerable level.

Toward the end of August, I was back in Lancaster and preparing to teach. From my experience in practice teaching I knew that kids that age in more settled areas could often be unruly, but most of the kids at Lancaster were farm and ranch kids who were well behaved and eager to learn.

I made some friends in the time I spent there. One day early that fall I happened to mention in class that I had never been on a horse in my life (and I meant both of my lives, although as usual I couldn’t say it.) It did not take long to get an invitation to a ranch out west of town to try riding a horse. It turned out to be fun and I quickly became pretty good at it, although not anywhere near as good as the kids of that family, who had been on horseback since shortly after they had been born. They were a fun family, and I frequently made trips out to their ranch just for the sake of the social contact, and spent quite a good bit of time working with their horses, not just riding them but taking care of them as well.

One day I happened to casually remark that I thought it would be fun to take a horse pack trip up in the mountains sometime, but never thought anything about it until a couple months later when Ron, the father of the family, came to me and asked. “Hey, are you still interested in doing a mountain horse pack trip?”

I told him that I sure was. It turned out that he had a cousin, Norm, who had a working ranch up in North Park northwest of Denver. It was also a dude ranch, and he offered pack trips into the mountains, and was looking for another hand to help with the trips – especially someone who knew how to handle themselves climbing.

I wound up spending two summers working for Norm. A lot of it was herding dudes as much as it was taking care of the horses, but he was glad to have someone who could teach basic climbing since a lot of people wanted to try it out. I managed to get a fair amount of Alpine climbing in, even if it was not of great difficulty, but I spent a lot of time in the mountains and I was getting paid – although not much – for it.

The two years I spent in Lancaster were mostly enjoyable, but two years were also enough for me. Teaching was something I could do, and I didn’t think I did badly at it, but I was still yearning for some more serious adventure, so when the local kid graduated from college and got her teaching certificate, I was perfectly happy to let her have the job.

Although I had the summer dude-ranch job with Norm, I had already been looking for something else to do when the summer was over with. My finances were in better shape than they had been when I came to Lancaster, mostly because I didn’t spend any more money than I had to. However, I was still trying to stack up some savings so I could do some bigger trip, although I had no idea where it would be.

At times in my life luck has found me in the weirdest ways. During my first summer as a pack train helper, we were sitting around a blazing campfire, and Norm got me to telling some stories about my climbing adventures. By now I had a few stock ones, especially about the Mont Blanc and Matterhorn climbs, and I mentioned that while they had been, fun, they’d been cold, too.

One of the clients spoke up, “If you like cold, I have just the place for you. What would you think of going to Antarctica?”

“I’d love to do it,” I said. “But you have to be a scientist or in the Navy, don’t you?”

“It used to be that way,” he said. “Not any more. The government contracts out a lot of the support services, running the camps and logistics, and I’m in human resources for the company that does the support.”

“You don’t say,” I said. “I think we have to have a little talk.”

We had more than a little talk. It turned out that the positions for that winter – the Austral summer – were already filled, but he urged me to put in an application for the following season, and of course I did. There might not be many chances for me to get to the Antarctic, but this could be one of them.

Over the course of the next ten months or so, there were several letters back and forth, and I even got called in for an interview, which I thought went all right. Just about the time the dude ranch season started, I was notified that I had been selected for a position as a logistics coordinator. I called my friend up, and he told me that it could be better described as “warehouse worker.” That was fine with me; the Antarctic was the Antarctic, after all.

Later that summer, we got in from a pack trip and there was a note to give my friend a call. I did so immediately, and was told, “It looks like you won’t be going after all. The guy who had the position I had you earmarked for last year decided to do it again, and since he’s already done it, he has dibs.”

“Well, nuts,” I said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess.”

“There are a few other positions I’m trying to fill,” he said. “For example, do you think you could handle a job as a recreation supervisor? It’s not a big deal, just keeping track of the rec hall, organizing programs and events to get people’s minds off the really rather dull times, but we do want some experience.”

Talk about something falling into my lap! “I spent fifteen months working as a recreation aide at a Red Cross canteen in Vietnam,” I told him. “I know all about that kind of thing.”

“Good grief, I didn’t know you had been a donut dolly,” he laughed. “You obviously know things about running recreation programs in remote, uncomfortable places. I think you’d be a good fit. Do you want the job?”

After the dude ranch season came to an end I closed out my house in Lancaster, moved most of my stuff back to the folks’ house, and at the first of September reported for an Antarctic orientation session back in Colorado. By the end of the month I was in New Zealand, getting aboard a C-130 not terribly different from the ones I’d flown around Vietnam in, and I was on my way to McMurdo Sound, the support base for the American Antarctic operations.

It really was a pretty dull job, although it was a lot colder outside than it had been in Vietnam.

Actually, it wasn’t all that cold. A relatively warm day outside got pretty close to the average deep winter day conditions in the upper Midwest, and while it got colder at times in both places the low temperature in McMurdo Sound wasn’t much worse than it had been at home. I could handle those kinds of temperatures easily. I’ve always been able to acclimate to temperature and climate changes easily, and it was no different there.

Amazingly enough, much of the job was similar to what I had done in Vietnam, although all at one location; there were no campmobiles going out to even more remote locations. I only rarely got outside the base area at McMurdo Sound, although a couple of times I was able to organize trips for the personnel to the historic Scott and Shackleton Huts not far away.

The New Zealand support base was also not far away from our base, and we visited back and forth on occasion just for the sake of seeing new faces once in a while. Who should I run into at the New Zealand base but Bruce, the guy who had suggested we climb the Matterhorn back in Chamonix!

Somewhere in there Bruce and I got our heads together, and we decided to organize a trip up Mount Erebus, the huge stratovolcano not far away from both the bases. The American management – I can’t say command – didn’t encourage trips to Mount Erebus but they couldn’t say anything about a New Zealand trip, and several Americans, including myself, wrangled invitations to ride along.

It was a fairly long trip, although we made most of it in a group of Sno-Cats, which could get fairly high up the mountain. I would say the majority of the group really weren’t well acclimatized for being outside, especially at that altitude, and they turned back, but Bruce and I, along with three or four others, were more prepared and dressed for it, so we decided to go for the summit. This involved about four hours of scrambling over snow and bare talus slopes, but there was no risk of not being able to complete the climb by sunset, since we were below the Antarctic Circle and the briefest sunset was still more than a month off.

We looked around for a while, took some pictures and caught our breaths, then turned back toward the vehicles. It had been a signature climb in my life, one I’ve dropped into conversations on many occasions since, but really not all that big a deal.

The job only lasted until late March, when the rest of the “summer people” as we were often referred to, were pulled out and flew back to New Zealand. I was offered the option of going back the following winter, but decided to give it a pass. After all, I’d been there and I had done just about everything I could do, with the exception of maybe a climb up Mount Vinson, the highest mountain on the continent. The Antarctic program had little reason to go there again, and for civilians it was pretty close to “you can’t get there from here” unless you were willing to spend a lot of money, and then it would have still been only nearly impossible.

The neat thing about the Antarctic was that I was well paid – in fact, the best pay rate by far I had earned in my life up to that point – and there just hadn’t been much to spend it on. That meant that when I hit New Zealand after only six months of work, I was in an even better financial position than when I had been with Cat and we left Vietnam.

Bruce left the New Zealand base about the same time, and we had already decided to get together for a while in his Auckland apartment, and maybe do some climbing in New Zealand, although the Austral winter was showing signs of setting in. We would have to be choosy about where we went. We were sitting around a pub one evening just kicking around ideas when he came up with a good one: “You know what we really ought to do? Go to Kathmandu.”

“Bruce, what are you saying?”

“Nepal. There’s some great trekking there, up in the Himalayas, and the time to do it is before the monsoon sets in along in June. It’s basically backpacking, but with our Antarctic funds we can afford to hire porters to do all the carrying.”

“But where? How?”

“I’ll have to do some asking around but it’s not impossible. Thanks to Sir Edmund Hillary’s work in the hinterlands of Nepal there are people around here who have been there and know the ins and outs, and I know there’s a chap in Kathmandu who makes a job out of organizing such things. I’d say we mostly just trek the valley trails, or whatever we happen to come up with. If it works out, we might even be able to get up to this year’s Everest expedition base camp.”

“Bruce, you come up with the damndest ideas,” I shook my head. “But if you can work out the details, I’m in. Sure, let’s go to Kathmandu.”

So we did. We got there in early May and spent most of our time hiking up the Solo Khumbu to Namche Bazar. It was intensely beautiful, some of the greatest mountain scenery in the world. From Namche Bazar we took a couple days hike on up to the Everest base camp. We were already higher than I had ever climbed before, and this had just been a trail hike. Everest still loomed far above us, cold and daunting; it made me shiver just to look at it. There was a Spanish expedition attempting the mountain, but unusually, no one hanging around the Base Camp had very much English so we didn’t find out much about it.

We hung around for a while, then turned back down the valley toward Namche Bazar. The monsoon season was approaching and we couldn’t get thrilled about hiking in all that rain. It was several days hike back to Kathmandu, and from there I decided to fly home. I was tempted to stay with Bruce for a while, but while he was a great climbing and trekking buddy I think we both felt that was about as far as we should push a relationship together.