hiking

Hiking the High Sierra with Low Vision

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Low vision, for me, means poor central vision but fairly reliable peripheral sight.

When I hike the High Sierra, I carry several shades of sunglasses, switching them as the light shifts from morning glare to afternoon shadows to forest dimness. For days at a time I walk through granite passes, meadows, and forests, letting the landscape unfold mile by mile.

Long before I lost my central vision, I was taught another way of seeing. As a young Boy Scout, my scoutmaster, a former Marine, warned us not to trust our eyes alone. “They miss things,” he said. “Roots, rocks, holes. Use your feet to see.” On nights of the new moon he would lead us down trails in total darkness, forcing us to feel our way forward step by step. That practice stayed with me.

Sixty years later, on a steep descent scattered with roots and rocks, I discovered just how much. Twice, as I scanned the ground and set my foot toward what looked like safe earth, my foot shifted on its own, landing inches away at a slightly different angle. The placement was perfect. My eyes had chosen one spot, my foot another. And my foot was right.

The surprise was sharp, almost eerie, a reminder that something in me had learned to trust the ground without seeing it. With years of scanning, practice, and attention, I now hike with far greater confidence. In the High Sierra, where every step matters, my feet have become my eyes.

How It Happens

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I slide the sheet of raw cookies
into the oven. Douglas fir trees sit still,
leaning into the canyon, wafting scents of maturity.

I missed the timer. The cookies
burned; black and hard
in a matter of minutes.

that same fir forest
caught too much heat.
A single spark,
in a few centuries of growth,
and everything was burnt
and hard. And standing,
to be remembered.

Still in loss,
we reach began again.

This time my eyes stayed home.
This time with the deep breath
that comes after ruin.

The fir cones cuddled
befriended by the fire
cleared mineral rich ground.

When the rains returned,
thousands of seedlings rose as
small green monuments
in the headlands of recovery.

That is how
attention works.
How resolve roots itself.
In their world.
In mine. In ours.

The Pop-Up Cafe

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Where the Water Lingers

The birds—thousands upon thousands—pass in darkness heading north while the weary take refuge for a spell in the welcoming and generous Laguna.

Even as the land dries, a narrow waterway ties the Laguna to its watersheds and, eventually, to the Russian River. Other waters linger too, but in secretive pockets—vernal pools, elusive while out in the open fields.

Today’s walk is for them.

A Familiar Path

We slip past the back edge of a modest trailer park to a worn path, familiar. I keep my trained eyes in motion, scanning for hazards—gopher holes, soft ruts—those quiet hazards of flatland walking. My peripheral vision still serves me well.

To the east, my eyes settle and find rest in the mountains. Mount St. Helena sits in relief, her western face abrupt and stern. On cold mornings, from the next ridge, steam from the geysers can be seen following the wind steadily skyward.

Once, people went there to heal in hot mineral baths. Now the steam turns turbines for the grid, closed to seekers.

Vernal Pools and Old Land

Below those mountains, the Russian River Valley holds simpler patterns. The tall grasses, even after a generous winter, have dried into a palette of muted straw. Valley oaks cast long, knowing shadows. This is old land.

My guide, my wife, calls out a vernal pool. Modest from this distance—barely a shimmer of green, dusted over with minute blossoms. Easy to overlook. Easy, in the past, to lose to development.

I walk gently, heel first, careful not to disturb what might lie beneath: Pacific chorus frogs, maybe a salamander or two. The ground is too wet for sitting, so I use binoculars from the edge, taking in the full reach of it—perhaps two feet deep, and no wider than a living room.

But inside, there’s movement. Fairy shrimp, suspended and ancient, the size of a comma, in clear water.

How is it these pools, so fleeting, carry such weight? What matters here exists beyond our frameworks—beyond human use or recognition.

The Return View of Wonder

I turn back the way I came. I’ve never minded an out-and-back trail. The return reveals the reverse view of wonder. From the oaks, Song sparrows, Bullock’s orioles, King bird—all engaged in their seasonal rites.

Overhead, the larger birds circle high, waiting for quiet. Waiting, perhaps, for our departure from their brief and bountiful café.

No need to pity the frogs. They’ve adapted to the temporary and the invisible. They know when to sing, and when to go still.

Going with the Flow

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Being in the blind community, I’m often told to continue doing what I love to do. Just do it differently. Hearing that mantra hitches on to the ‘old school’ mottos of ‘get yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again’. Those youthful jingles sometimes push us, sometimes encourage and sometimes bite.

With years of High Sierra hiking under my belt I went to Nature to understand how to carry on with my passions in the face of dramatic changes to my abilities. I now hear, ‘look at the creek racing down the mountain. Last year in a massive storm with high winds, a blow down’ of a tree community clogged the creek’s path with debris of loose rock, dirt and branches. What did the creek do? No pondering or hand ringing. The creek kept moving, right? Or, in this case, the creek made a pond and then flowed over the top of the debris.

One of my struggles in adapting my baking style is the rhythm of my moves about the kitchen. Flowing from recipe to gathering and measuring ingredients to mixing and baking. with much experience a cadence develops and is memorized by my soul. In my blood in other words. With low vision the rhythm has slowed and the cadence revised through new steps taken to ensure I’ve not missed an important point in a recipe or that I’ve measured correctly, gathered all the ingredients, mixed just right and baked to perfection.

In conversation, the creek changed its rhythm, adding steps: a pond, overflow over a dam. As an ancient example I tingle realizing the connections as I stand in a fast current in a wild river casting a fly to a spot behind a large boulder. Because I walk the river understanding better its features. Its riffles, eddies, pools and all the rest. The understanding that change is forever and my changes in vision and body function are simple and natural and I must simply let loose and be in my flow. as it changes throughout the length of a river, of a life.