As her new book, Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver, comes out, world-renowned Royal Canadian Geographical Society Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth reflects on what led her to a path of adventurous discovery.
ON FRIDAY, FEB. 5, 1971, the PA system at Munden Park Public School in Mississauga, Ont., reverberated with a special announcement. The school principal requested staff and students assemble in the library — to watch television!
As school had started that day, two men were donning spacesuits for a walk on the moon that lasted more than five hours. At about 4 a.m., Apollo 14 had landed in the moon’s Fra Mauro crater, the intended landing site of the aborted Apollo 13 mission of 1970.
Our teachers seemed a bit nervous as we watched the walk, perhaps because of a fresh awareness of the risks astronauts face. Alan Shepard seemed relaxed as he filmed Edgar Mitchell bunny-hopping down the Antares lunar module’s ladder with a Maurer 16-mm movie camera. The crew planted the American flag, off-loaded an experiments package and even hit a couple of golf balls before the day was through. It was the third time astronauts had been on the moon. I was mesmerized. “MOM, DAD, I want to be an astronaut!” I declared over dinner that evening. They were accustomed to my earnest goalsetting at mealtime. I had already expressed interest in people I had seen on TV, whether it was Jacques Cousteau, Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom fame or “the most trusted man in America,” CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.
This story is from the September-October 2019 edition of Canadian Geographic.
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This story is from the September-October 2019 edition of Canadian Geographic.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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