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Blind Back-packing and Bird-watching
Being an account of what it is like to be an inveterate traveller and bird-watcher who loses his eyesight.Jim Turner:::Traverse City, Michigan USA:::at783@tcnet.org] I began to notice a visual deficiency in 1975, at the age of 37. Retinitis Pigmentosa was diagnosed in 1981, and I was declared legally blind in 1989. .....(Retinitis Pigmentosa is a hereditary, degenerative disease, for which there is no known treatment, cure or preventative. Its course is the gradual deterioration of the retina, beginning with the peripheral vision, resulting in gradually closing "tunnel vision". The central vision remains unimpaired until the later stages of the disease. There is also substantial "night blindness", affecting the entire visual field)I am not one of those courageous heroes that we hear about on TV talk shows. I just kept on doing the things I always liked to do, even though it became more and more challenging (and exasperating). I don't really even think of them as being that much more challenging---I just take it easy and do things slower, and reduce my expectations somewhat. The two things I most enjoy are travelling and bird-watching. Generally, these days, I combine them both into the same activity, but to describe how I deal with them, I will divide them into two separate adventures.TRAVEL I have visited 120 countries in the world, and since becoming legally blind, I've gone to 35 of them in Latin America and east Asia. A blind traveller would have no more trouble in Caracas or Jakarta than in Denver, if he flew into the airport, hailed a taxi to the Hilton, and was escorted up the elevator by the bellhop. But that's not the way I travel. I arrive in cities at the bus station, not the airport. I walk to the cheap hotel district if it's no more than a mile or two. The streets are unpaved, the sidewalks are either non-existent or worse. Sleeping dogs and sniffling toddlers assume that people will walk around them. Bicyclists claim the right of way over pedestrians. The sound of a car horn means a quick search for a new footfall out of harm's way. Sewers are a menace--they don't always have grates. There is an advantage and a disadvantage to the shortness of third world adults. I can see over their heads, for an overview of my surroundings. But signs and cornices often project from buildings less than six feet above the ground. It would amaze me, if I thought about it, that I always arrive at a suitable hotel (which means cheap enough--three or four dollars) amid the chaotic disorder of a place like Riobamba or Savannakhet, and begin the task of learning my way around my new home. I might have my own bathroom (if I splurge)---otherwise, it is down the hall, probably around a corner or two, maybe even up or down a flight of stairs, and amost certainly, the course is labyrinthine and unlit, with at least one improbable and inexplicable step up or down somewhere along the way. I have discovered that whenever I go up or down a new flight of stairs, I subconsciously count them, and remember(for future reference) how many there were. Meals are eaten on the cheap, too, of course. About an even split between proper-but-simple restaurants, and makeshift food-stalls in the marketplace. The latter are a special challenge. Very narrow, crowded passageways, lighted by glaring bare-bulbs; spontaneous curbs and drainage ditches, unpredictable slopes, and plenty of trash, sleeping dogs, toddling babies and overflow merchandise underfoot. But by far the best and cheapest places to eat. I avoid the marketplace except at mealtimes, when I scope out the shortest way from the exterior to the food-stalls. Restaurants are a little better for navigation--better lit, a little less crowded, and open at night. Generally I avoid going out at night, except for a restaurant that is a very short walk from the hotel. I also try to avoid arriving after dark in an unknown city, although most third world towns are now well lit enough that after dark, the challenge of getting around is not really that much worse than in the daytime. If there are one-way streets, I try to stick to those going the same way I do, to avoid the blinding glare of oncoming car lights.BIRD-WATCHING Bird-watching is becoming less and less of an accurate description of what I do. More and more, it is `bird-listening', although I still try to see everything if I can. I started bird-watching, or `birding' as it is called, in 1978, when I moved from the city to a small town in Kansas and was delighted to see my backyard enlivened by those birds I had seen in bird-books as a child. I bought a Golden Guide and a $35 pair of binoculars, and discovered that with a little attention to detail, I could find and identify local species of birds I had never even heard of. There are 19 different species of Sparrows in Missouri! I was hooked. My wife, whom I met twelve years ago, got hooked too, and she quickly became a better birder than I ever was. She now finds the birds and tries to tell me right where to look for them. But, with my extra 15 years of experience, I have a keener ear for them, and I can walk in the field for hours and identify nearly every bird I hear by ear. If they are all commonplace, it saves a lot of time and effort, since the primary objective is always to sift out the more unusual birds and confirm their presence. When I do hear a bird I do not recognize the call of, I bring it to her attention, and she tries to locate it. Occasionally I still find it before she does, but only by luck---birds in foliage are detected only when they move, and if I'm looking a foot to the right or left of the flitting bird, I will not see it. Before I met Kate, I had accumulated a list of over 500 North American species I had found, seen and identified. When she started birding, we started over, and she has now seen about 530, and I think I've seen at least 500 of those. So I, while legally blind, I have seen a list of birds that normally sighted, experienced birders would consider impressive for themselves. In addition, we spent 6 months in Asia, birding wherever possible, and saw 430 species, of which I probably saw about 400---virtually all of them previously unfamiliar to me.
Aside from actually seeing the birds, my limited vision doesn't really bother me much in the field. Walking around in open country is relatively straightforward, although I avoid rocky, irregular terrain in which it is necessary to choose a safe footfall for every step. I cannot walk the way I used to, casually hopping along picking a footfall in stride. On a single-file trail, I prefer to go ahead, so I can have an unobstructed view of the path ahead and have a sense of any irregularities that I can prepare for. But if there are a lot of overhanging branches, its better to have someone ahead that can warn me about hazards at eye-level while I look at my feet. Crossing a river on stepping stones is always an adventure--often a hilarious one. It astonishes me, how well my eye can `remember' what it has scanned across and is no longer in my field of view, and a quick glance up a path will register in such a way that I know how far I can walk inattentively before I again have to do the reconnaisance. So I am able, in most cases, to walk quite a number of steps with my eyes searching the surrounding habitat. Perhaps the most difficult aspect is trying to find a bird that is flying overhead, such as a soaring hawk. The featureless sky subdivides into a pretty daunting number of sectors equal to my field of view, and often I just give up before I stumble across the "tunnel" that the bird is flying through. I still have a wish-list, of those nemisis birds that I haven't yet seen, but should have---so I'll keep looking, and keep listening, and keep travelling to the places where they ought to be found.
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