Her father was from a wealthy family from Springfield, Massachusetts, supposedly a distant relation to James Garfield, while her mother grew up in Boston as the daughter of Swedish immigrants.
Wood became fond of outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing, river rafting and horseback riding during her childhood, and her family spent many summers at a cottage on Lake Chelan.
She continued studying English at the University of Washington and worked as a ski patrolman and truck driver on the side before her friend, Barbara Erickson, convinced her to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) corps for flight instruction in 1943.
[1] Wood trained for five months in Sweetwater, Texas under Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Love, before being assigned the Sixth Ferrying Division in Long Beach, California.
[1] Because Camp Denali had one of the few airplanes in the national park, Wood was frequently called in to do search and rescue operations, and to help trips taken by the United States Geological Survey.
[6][7] Wood helped lead protests against Project Chariot, a plan to use nuclear explosives to create a deep-water harbor in northwest Alaska[1] and she testified before Congress in opposition to the Rampart Dam.