Getting in touch with nature even when sight is limited or lost

Sep. 22—STONINGTON — Starting in the Miner Burial Place next to Quimbaug Cove, experienced naturalist Bruce Fellman on Sunday led a group of visually impaired members of the South East Connecticut Community Center of the Blind on a nature hike through Avalonia Land Conservancy's 17-acre Knox Preserve.

Along an old farm road on the preserve ― one of the smaller ones owned and maintained by Avalonia and its crew of volunteers ― Fellman stopped at times along the road on which they walked to highlight native or invasive plants.

What he could not show, he had members of the center of the blind run their fingers over leaves, stems or flowers of the plants to get a sense for their shapes and sizes.

Members of the center of the blind varied in terms of their levels of visual impairment. But all reported that they were happy to be along on the hike ― out in nature and disproving stigmas about what is capable after developing blindness.

Tammy Paradis and Joann Lendroth, two members of the center, share a condition called Usher syndrome.

"It's a dual sensory loss," Paradis said. "And we were born either profoundly deaf or moderately deaf from birth."

The eye condition, 58-year-old Paradis, of Groton said, is called retinitis pigmentosa. Their vision is not completely gone, but has gotten much worse.

"We had a normal-sighted life," Paradis said. "But we had to adjust and adapt as it slowly, progressively, changed and got worse."

Lendroth, 62, of Preston, added the condition develops most commonly in teenagers, and usually begins with night vision lessening.

"You'll be with your friends and you're playing and you're just getting whacked more times than playing," she said. "So you just think it's normal, and you just try to figure out — why can everybody do it but I can't? You know? But as time goes on, you start realizing somethings wrong."

Paradis said she thought the hike was wonderful, "especially since, when we were sighted, we could see what these things were."

"Now, we're being introduced to something that we don't know what it is, or we've never had the experience of touching it, looking at it, and learning the history," she added.

For example, she brought up a bird's nest-looking clump of flowers, a dried Queen Anne's Lace, a member of the carrot family which grows a group of small white flowers. Fellman had her and the rest of the group touch and look at.

Lendroth liked when he showed the Montauk daisy, which he said is not actually native to the region of Long Island, but rather an Asian invasive species.

"It was nice when he brought up the Montauk daisy. I knew what that was, because I'd been around them, and seen them," Lendroth said. "And it was like, well, I know that! It's like everything else, you memorized everything from what you remember."

The two had been carrying walking canes and wearing dark sunglasses as they traversed over the sometimes uneven farm road at the Avalonia preserve. Elanah Sherman, the hike organizer for Avalonia, said it had been mowed days before by Avalonia volunteers. But some short stems from stubborn plants poked up from the ground, so the walkers still needed to exercise caution.

But as H. Kevin Harkins, vice president of the center of the blind's board, pointed out, tripping can happen to anyone, not just the visually impaired.

"Those that are visually impaired are just as able to get out and get involved in society and in the world as anybody else," he said. "As far as the hazards of falling down or getting hurt, something like that, everybody faces those challenges. I'd be foolish if I didn't acknowledge that there are real, specific things one has to be careful of if one can't see. But if someone has the will to do something, they're going to do it."

Harkins, of Norwich, was along on the hike because he loves nature.

"I've always liked being out in the woods," Harkins said. "I wished that more people, blind or not blind, would take time to be a part of the miracle of the natural world — the trees, the oceans and the stars and the sky. And it sounds corny to talk about but it's true. There's a lot of healthy stuff there waiting for everybody."

Avalonia, a nonprofit which conserves more than 5,000 acres of open land in Connecticut and Rhode Island which it owns in perpetuity, is trying to open up greater opportunities for people with disabilities to traverse its lands. Sherman said she expects within two years it will have at least one site that meets a "very high level of accessibility."

"But we'll never just funnel people with disabilities to these environments," she said. "We'll always try to mirror the values of the disability rights movement in emphasizing choice and autonomy."

Paradis said the nice thing about being at the center of the blind is its wealth of resources that allow her and other impaired persons to be independent, and adjust and adapt. For example, in her role there as office assistant at the center of the blind, she has a computer that can talk to her, and a magnifier for the screen that is the size of a big television.

"And so, that's what we're trying to share with the public," she said. "Don't sit in the dark. You don't have to. And that's why we're here."

"Not only that, we want to set an example to other people," Lendroth added. "There's no such thing as can't. You can do it, it's just going to take you a little longer, but you get there."

"No sitting in the dark," she said.

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