Post by L Roebuck on Dec 19, 2005 11:24:17 GMT -5
Cave guide, 69, leaves whippersnappers in the dust
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Janet Bass Smith surprises lots of people when she tells them she'll be their guide for Mammoth Cave National Park's Wild Cave Tour.
Ms. Smith, a seasonal guide at the park, is 5 feet, 4 inches, and 69 years old. She's an award-winning poet, painter and classical pianist who has taught at four universities and performed in concerts across the United States and in Europe.
She also is a veteran caver who fell in love with crawling through black holes a few years after she moved to Bowling Green, Ky., in 1989. She went with her husband, flutist-composer Charles W. Smith, when he took the job as head of the music department at Western Kentucky University.
Ms. Smith was in her 50s when she first took the Wild Cave Tour with a son. Both emerged exhausted, aching and covered in bruises, she recalled.
She had a hard time explaining all her bruises a week later, when an unrelated abdominal problem took her to a hospital emergency room. When the ER staff saw her battered body, "my husband says they called the police and reported him for wife beating," says Ms. Smith.
She doesn't let the cave beat her up anymore, and a six-hour trip through Mammoth's toughest passages no longer exhausts her, she said.
She's learned to relax and move through tight passages and steep climbs without fighting the rock, she said.
Ms. Smith has gotten used to the disbelieving looks and even comments that come when Wild Cave participants, especially young men, learn that a piano-playing grandmother is one of their guides.
It happened last year when 14 soldiers from Fort Campbell, Ky., showed up, announcing they were there for "the hard tour, the tough stuff."
Some soldiers snickered when her fellow tour guide told them they wouldn't be able to keep up with Ms. Smith.
She wiped the grins off their faces when she led the group through Sharon's Lost River, a narrow, shallow passage that kept them crawling for 45 minutes, sometimes through water.
"I was just going at my usual pace when I noticed I couldn't see any lights [from headlamps] behind me anymore," she said.
When the tour regrouped later, she apologized for getting so far ahead of the soldiers. "I said, 'Gee, I forgot you guys aren't as young as I am.' When one of the men protested that he was 21, "I said, 'Well, my oldest grandchild is 22.' "
www.post-gazette.com/pg/05352/623092.stm
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Janet Bass Smith surprises lots of people when she tells them she'll be their guide for Mammoth Cave National Park's Wild Cave Tour.
Ms. Smith, a seasonal guide at the park, is 5 feet, 4 inches, and 69 years old. She's an award-winning poet, painter and classical pianist who has taught at four universities and performed in concerts across the United States and in Europe.
She also is a veteran caver who fell in love with crawling through black holes a few years after she moved to Bowling Green, Ky., in 1989. She went with her husband, flutist-composer Charles W. Smith, when he took the job as head of the music department at Western Kentucky University.
Ms. Smith was in her 50s when she first took the Wild Cave Tour with a son. Both emerged exhausted, aching and covered in bruises, she recalled.
She had a hard time explaining all her bruises a week later, when an unrelated abdominal problem took her to a hospital emergency room. When the ER staff saw her battered body, "my husband says they called the police and reported him for wife beating," says Ms. Smith.
She doesn't let the cave beat her up anymore, and a six-hour trip through Mammoth's toughest passages no longer exhausts her, she said.
She's learned to relax and move through tight passages and steep climbs without fighting the rock, she said.
Ms. Smith has gotten used to the disbelieving looks and even comments that come when Wild Cave participants, especially young men, learn that a piano-playing grandmother is one of their guides.
It happened last year when 14 soldiers from Fort Campbell, Ky., showed up, announcing they were there for "the hard tour, the tough stuff."
Some soldiers snickered when her fellow tour guide told them they wouldn't be able to keep up with Ms. Smith.
She wiped the grins off their faces when she led the group through Sharon's Lost River, a narrow, shallow passage that kept them crawling for 45 minutes, sometimes through water.
"I was just going at my usual pace when I noticed I couldn't see any lights [from headlamps] behind me anymore," she said.
When the tour regrouped later, she apologized for getting so far ahead of the soldiers. "I said, 'Gee, I forgot you guys aren't as young as I am.' When one of the men protested that he was 21, "I said, 'Well, my oldest grandchild is 22.' "
www.post-gazette.com/pg/05352/623092.stm