Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There. This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your windowbox and garden, to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores, and wilderness.

On the show, we explore our relationship with nature through stories, interviews, essays, and even some fiction.

We travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and heartbreak, passion, and adversity, desperation, and triumph. When you see someone in a wheelchair, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Do you pity them? Do you count your blessings that you're not in their position?

Do you offer to help them?

Or do you think to yourself, I wonder if this person races marathons?

I'll be honest. Marathon racing was never something that crossed my mind when I saw someone with a disability.

That is, until I met

Sherry Blowett. Sherry is 30-something in slender, with gentle eyes and a winning smile. And, yes,

she's in a wheelchair. She's also won some of the country's most competitive marathons, and she's

come home with several medals, including a gold,

in the Paralympics. In case you're not familiar with the Paralympics, they're international

athletic games like the Olympics, but for people with disabilities.

And occur in parallel. The para is actually meant to mean parallel, not paraplegic. And so

it's the pinnacle of sport for athletes of disabilities across the world.

I sat down with Sherry to talk about what it was like becoming a world-class athlete when you have a disability like hers, a disability that would stop many of us from pursuing any kind of significant outdoor activities.

Sherry grew up in rural Iowa.

When she was 16 months old, she was in a farming accident,

which left her with a spinal cord injury.

Because of that, my memories as far back as they go are of being a wheelchair user and a person with a disability.

So it's kind of similar to many others who are born with a disability

because that's the only way I've ever known

myself. As a kid, it never occurred to Sherry to do sports. Like many people with disabilities,

...