[NFB-Idaho] Erin's What's Your Everest: Blindness and Hiking

[Erin A. Olsen]

⛰️  My Everest: Blindness -  First Hiking  Experiences
Follow my Colorado adventure here: https://give.nobarriersusa.org/fundraiser/3356709
Vision loss and blindness can be devastating for the person and their families, impacting literally every part of their life. Each person’s case is unique as is there response to it. 🚧  As with other challenges, it can be ignored or it can be taken on. I chose to take it on. Now that didn’t happen initially. I had to go through that initial adjustment phase, but then I enrolled in my “blind classes” from the Idaho Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ICBVI) and got wicked-good blind skills from their talented and dedicated staff. 👍

There were a LOT of things I needed to learn to do differently from 🍳  cooking to using a ⌨️ computer non-visually. The one that meant the difference between being isolated at home and living the life I wanted was the ability to navigate independently. 🦯   I did not fight use of the white cane. I appreciated it because it told others I was blind, not just someone who fell over or ran into things. I DID have to learn how to use it though. It’s not just a matter of tapping left and right, it means I DON’T run into or fall over things any more.

👩🏻‍🦯 Orientation & mobility (O&M) was the scariest part of my training though, due in part to my own personality traits. During our lessons, I’d be told to leave the Commission and find my way to specific places in downtown Boise. Walking down a sidewalk, finding my way out of a parking lot, crossing streets, and finding a specific door in a row of storefronts is difficult. As a person who is a perfectionist, I did not like that I could not prepare for this or do it well the first (or even fourth) time. With my instructor Kevin Jernigan’s  support and persistence, I did learn to do it though.

🥾  Throughout my training, Kevin had shared stories of people who used various techniques  to accomplish different activities despite their blindness. One day, I asked him about how we could safely do things like hiking, especially by ourselves.  We talked about it a few times before I asked him if we could do some “off roading” rather than just our urban navigation. We decided to do a hike at Camelback Park. Working my way up a trail, over or around rocks and keeping my balance was challenging. At the top, I was rewarded with a warming spring sun, a slight breeze and that amazing sound of almost-silence you only get when in a wide open expanse. It was FABULOUS and I was hooked. I think it was before we got back to the car that I said I wanted to hike to Table Rock.

Kevin said he thought I was the first student to ever ask to do that but A couple of weeks later, Kevin, myself and a fellow student now friend, Marci, successfully hiked to the top. We navigated the entire way non-visually. Kevin did give marci and I a hand-up onto a particularly high piece of rock, but that had nothing to do with vision, most people would have liked that help. Other than that, he was there for support, but we did it ourselves. 🏁 It took us some time, I think it was a little over 2 hours or so. Like Camelback, standing on top of the mesa and reveling in that accomplishment was amazing. 🌄

Blindness absolutely impacts me everyday, in almost everything I do. It takes me much longer to

Help support me and the What’s Your Everest event: https://give.nobarriersusa.org/fundraiser/3356709