Word: cane
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Erik walks through these Kathmandu streets with remarkable ease, his red-tipped cane searching out ahead of him, measuring distance, pitch and angle. You give him little hints as he goes--"There's a doorway. O.K., now a right--no, left, sorry"--and he follows, his stride confident but easily arrested when he bumps into an old lady selling shawls, and then into the wheel of a scooter. The physical confidence that he projects has to do with having an athlete's awareness of how his body moves through space. Plenty of sighted people walk through life with less poise...
When he lost his vision, Erik at first refused to use a cane or learn Braille, insisting he could somehow muddle on as normal. "I was so afraid I would seem like a freak," he recalls. But after a few embarrassing stumbles--he couldn't even find the school rest rooms anymore--he admitted he needed help. For Erik, the key was acceptance--not to fight his disability but to learn to work within it; not to transcend it but to understand fully what he was capable of achieving within it; not to pretend he had sight but to build...
Erik first went hiking with his father when he was 13, trying to tap his way into the wild with a white cane and quickly becoming frustrated stubbing his toes on rocks and roots and bumping into branches and trunks. But when he tried rock climbing, at 16 while at a camp for the disabled in New Hampshire, he was hooked. Like wrestling, it was a sport in which being blind didn't have to work against him. He took to it quickly, and through climbing gradually found his way to formal mountaineering...
...intrigue and turmoil. A noon curfew was imposed, and maneuvering around the city became increasingly dangerous. Getting Weihenmayer's story became a little more problematic. "At one point I was walking down the street past the palace with Erik when a riot broke out," says Greenfeld. "Erik with his cane and I had to run from these angry, shaven-headed Nepali youth and the police who were chasing them...
...Erik walks through these Kathmandu streets with remarkable ease, his red-tipped cane searching out ahead of him, measuring distance, pitch and angle. You give him little hints as he goes?"There's a doorway. O.K., now a right?no, left, sorry"?and he follows, his stride confident but easily arrested when he bumps into an old lady selling shawls, and then into the wheel of a scooter. The physical confidence that he projects has to do with having an athlete's awareness of how his body moves through space. Plenty of sighted people walk through life with less poise...