The woman who flies
Frances Whiting
July 30, 2006 12:00am
IT'S hard to even imagine how it feels. How it feels to walk away from everything you know - your job, your family, your security, your life - to walk away, step into the void and fly.
Heather Swan knows how it feels – and she also knows it feels to be scared, so mind-numbingly, gut-wrenchingly frightened that your whole body starts to shut down, screaming at you not to take another step.
Heather Swan knows all of this, and does it anyway.
The 43-year-old mother-of-two has just returned from India, where she and her husband, Dr Glenn Singleman, set a world record for base jumping off the 6660m Mt Meru in the Himalayas.
It was a remarkable feat for many reasons, not least because Meru is such a formidable challenge to climb.
Before she heard her husband's traditional "Ready, set, go" and hurled herself off it, she had to negotiate her way up 14 vertical ice pitches through avalanches and snow storms in conditions so tough it took her more than five hours to walk the last 400m to the summit.
If there was ever an expedition that typified the saying "it's not about the destination, it's the journey" it was this one, and probably the most remarkable thing about Heather Swan is not so much that she jumped off a mountain, but how she arrived there.
"Ten years ago, I was living in Manly in Sydney and working as the national manager for entrepreneur Harry M. Miller's speakers agency and I guess on the outside, my life couldn't have been better," Heather recalls.
"You know, I had the great apartment overlooking the ocean, I had the high-paying, high-flying job, I was mixing with Australia's best-known celebrities, I had the BMW, I had the great clothes – and then I went to see this man speak, and my whole life was turned upside down."
"This man" was Dr Glenn Singleman, an emergency care physician, well-known mountaineer, skydiver, base (building, antennae, span, earth) jumper and documentary-maker whom Heather was checking out as a potential speaker for the powerful Miller agency.
"I remember thinking on the way there that I was wasting my time – that he was going to be some swaggering, macho idiot.
"I'd seen a lot of speakers who could talk the talk but didn't actually walk the walk, but when I sat down to listen to him I was just completely transfixed.
"He wasn't like that at all, he was quiet, dignified – and it was obvious he had such passion for what he was doing."
Her future husband started his presentation by showing a video of his latest world-breaking base jump off the breathtaking 6258m Great Trango Tower (first climbed only in 1977) in Pakistan.
As she watched the video clip of what seemed to be a small, black rag doll hurling itself off the mountain's sheer granite face, two thoughts entered her mind.
One was: "Oh, my God, that's the scariest thing I have ever seen, I could never do that." The other was: "But if you could do that, you could do anything."
After the presentation, Heather introduced herself, Glenn joined the agency and the two started seeing each other regularly, eventually falling in love, marrying and blending their families together – Heather had a son and a daughter from her first marriage, Glenn had two sons from his.
"We just fitted together really easily but the one thing that caused problems in our marriage was Glenn's skydiving," Heather recalls.
"I really resented him going. I was scared for him."
But eventually she came to accept that the need to push himself out of planes, down canyons and into situations most of us would run screaming from was an integral part of her husband's personality, as was his fervent belief – a belief that resonated throughout every talk he gave – that anyone could do what he did, provided they underwent the correct physical training and, more importantly, mastered their own fears.
"What he believed – and what I later discovered was true – was that if you can overcome all those little and big fears that we all have, there is a whole different person underneath.
"We can all be so much more than what we think we can, we can all do so much more than what we think we can, but fear is so pervasive – it can even affect the way we act in a restaurant.
"And as a society we are getting more and more fearful . . . not letting our kids take any risks at all . . . removing swings from playgrounds.
"But back then I didn't really understand fear or how much it was stopping me from doing so many things I know now I can."
She was about to find out. One day in August 1999, a mountaineering friend of Glenn's told him that a higher place to base-jump from than the Great Trango Tower had been found. As her husband started to think about tackling this new challenge, she found herself saying: "Well, here's your chance to prove your theory, darling, you could train me – you could take me."
Heather recalls with a smile: "The moment I said it I remember thinking, 'Where the hell did that come from and how do I take it back?'
"Glenn just looked horrified and was stunned by what I said and so was I – but I knew, deep down, that I wanted to do this thing."
Her husband was less sure, and decided to cast their fate to fate, writing up a film proposal for the project and seeing if anyone was interested in funding a documentary on whether a self-confessed unfit, overweight businesswoman and mother with not one daredevil bone in her entire body could transform herself into a lean, mean, climbing, diving and jumping machine.
To his surprise, ABC television was interested, and the next thing the slightly shell-shocked couple knew, they had a deal.
"The first thing Glenn did was to show me how far I had to go – he did all these fitness tests, all these measurements and I don't remember any of those except the figure that said I had 36 per cent body fat.
"I just sat down on the floor and cried and cried – I might be a base jumper but I'm still a woman," Heather grins.
Next was a gruelling physical program of running six days a week, indoor climbing, resistance training, cycling, lifting weights – and then the really hard stuff started.
"Glenn said the first thing I had to do to prepare for base jumping was skydiving, that I needed to get my A-licence and that depending on my natural ability, this would take between 100 to 200 jumps."
Unfortunately for Heather, she proved to have no natural ability at all. It is a testament to her incredible tenacity that she never gave up, despite her shocking exits, bouts of vertigo, uncontrollable shaking and a feeling she was going to die before she reached the ground.
Having mastered skydiving, the next step in the plan was to bungy-jump. Glenn believed the activity would give his wife a feel for what a base-jumping exit might feel like.
This time she was even more terrified than she had been skydiving – this time, however, she had reason to be.
In February 2000 they went to Queenstown in New Zealand to do the Nevis, which is second highest bungy jump in the world.
"I was so scared, even though Glenn kept telling me how easy it was, how it was what he called "junk-food adventure", how thousands of people did it every day, and how all you needed was the skill of an anvil, but I was really frightened.
"But of course, there was no going back for me, so I jumped off and the first part was easy, great even – but then I felt this dreadful pain, like I'd been stabbed in the stomach with a knife."
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Heather's harness had not been fitted correctly, with the result that the forces of gravity were not evenly distributed. She punctured her duodenum – or in simple terms, a hole had been blown in her small intestines.
Rushed to emergency surgery fighting for her life, Heather spent two weeks in intensive care, then three months in hospital recuperating – and nursing her anger.
"I was angry with everyone, with myself for thinking I could do this thing, and with my husband.
"I'd scream at him, 'You've got no business telling people that they can overcome all this stuff, no business at all'."
With Heather now incapacitated, the film was obviously off, but a visit to the couple's home by the film's insurance representative was to change everything once more.
"Glenn was saying we'd have to call the whole thing off, and this man said, "Oh no, there's no need for that – just get another woman to do it' and I was so mad.
"I remember thinking, 'Oh no you don't, mate. If anyone's going to do this, it's going to be me', and from that moment on I was 110 per cent committed to doing it."
What followed was a six-year odyssey – at times an ordeal – of exhausting, gruelling and sometimes heartbreaking mental and physical training.
Determined to learn how to base jump, Heather graduated from skydiving out of planes to skydiving out of hot air balloons (apparently exiting a balloon is more akin to base jumping than exiting an aeroplane) to her first real base jump off the Perrine River bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Then, finally on May 23 this year, Heather, with her husband by her side, base-jumped off Meru in a specially designed "wing suit" and soared for 45 glorious seconds above the clouds before releasing her chute and landing safely on the ground, firmly on her feet.
To get there she had given up her career, endured a bruised and bloodied body, broken bones, a regularly damaged ego, criticism from strangers and friends, and the derision of some members of the international base-jumping community.
"It was so hard. Base-jumping is a very male-dominated sport – there are only six women in the world with their wing-suit pilot licence – and when I first started, I was a complete joke.
"There were nasty things written on the internet saying things like to get in touch with Glenn at www.killyourwife.com and on top of that there are, of course the questions about your children, your family."
Heather is well aware, as a mother, that there are those who find her choices reckless, even selfish, but she vigorously defends her right to choose.
"I just think it's funny that a lot of the people who level this criticism at us are so clearly not looking after their health and are candidates for heart attacks.
"I plan to live for a long time, and so does Glenn.
"Some people seem obsessed with prolonging life, rather than the quality of life.
"I believe the biggest gift you can give your kids is the freedom not to be scared and, really, what is the point of living for a long time if you're miserable?
"I grew up with a mother who gave up her own aspirations and dreams to raise us, and while I admire her for that, it also made her rather bitter.
"I grew up very aware what she had given up for us, and I don't think that makes you a better parent."
Some people might argue that a bitter parent might be better than no parent at all, and there is no question that base jumping can be a dangerous pastime with more than 100 fatalities worldwide since the early 1980s.
But Heather is adamant base jumping is no more a risky undertaking than most of us face everyday driving on our frantic, overcrowded streets.
"There are fatalities in base jumping, yes, and when they happen, there is a frenzy of media activity – but no one reports on the hundreds of thousands of jumps that are done each year," she says.
"In Twin Falls alone there are 10,000 incident-free jumps a year.
"But, yes, people do die, and typically when they die they're right out on the edge of the sport, people with very little experience or people who try things they shouldn't or those pushing the very limits of risk.
"But Glenn and I are meticulous, we're not risk- takers, we plan to the last degree, and if one little thing isn't right or doesn't seem right we don't jump – and we plan to be around for a long time."
For Heather that time will be spent reaping the rewards of the past few years, of being fearless, of being confident in her decisions, and of knowing that she was right all those years ago when she looked at that video clip and thought: "If you could do that, you could do anything".
And it doesn't have to be anything as spectacular as base jumping off mountains in the Himalayas, or throwing yourself out of planes, either.
For Heather, the lesson learnt is that fear can stop us from doing all sorts of things – big and small – and her next challenge is also something she never thought she'd be able to do.
"Actually I'd like to learn to sew really well."
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,19949674-23272,00.html
http://www.baseclimb.com/
