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Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Ever thought about camping, canoeing, hiking? Well, last week I got a great opportunity and I took it. State Services for the Blind and the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living partnered up with Wilderness Inquiry for an outdoor camping, hiking, canoeing adventure for Pre-ETS students. I got to attend to help capture the moment, the memories, and enjoy the outdoors.
Shane DeSantis:
Hey Jeff, this is Shane DeSantis here, Transition Coordinator with State Services for the Blind and we are out at the Interstate, State Park in Taylor Falls, Minnesota, right on the St. Croix River and we’ve got a group of students who are camping overnight and then we have staff from SSB, the Duluth Lighthouse Center for Vital Living and Wilderness Inquiry. This is our fourth trip with Wilderness Inquiry.
They’re non-profit in the Twin Cities and they do outdoor experiences for all and so we’ve been working with them since 2022. We’ve done some day trips, camped on the river and then the canoe and building on some team building skills and self-advocacy and this is our first overnight experience. So here we’re on getting breakfast right now and the students are helping out with the meal planning and prepping meals and then this afternoon we’ll be pedaling on the St. Croix River and learning you know how to canoe and work in a team to achieve the objective which will be to go down river and stop for lunch along the way. So we’re happy to be here, happy to have a good group of students and then a great group of staff building in some cooking instruction over a campfire or over a stove and then learning about the outdoors.
Jeff:
I see the team building is working because I see there must be 10, 12 tents up around here.
Shane:
Yes so we got here yesterday and all the students helped construct their tent. Wilderness Inquiry, they supply all of the gear and then they’re here to help. Anyway they can but they showed the students how to build tents. They’ve got sleeping bags. We’ve got about five picnic tables with supplies. We got food, they’ve got some camp stoves, water, station for hand washing and then the students also constructed some neon rope to go from the campsite to the bathroom and building in some vision considerations as we’re here in the outdoors.
Amy:
I’m Amy and I’m here participating in the Wilderness Inquiry Lighthouse Camp thing. It’s been really fun. We like put up our tents yesterday and that was difficult because we had like a broken piece but we fixed it and it’s pretty spacious in there. I didn’t think it would actually be that spacious but it is and I’m happy about that because I was like I don’t not want to be like up close and personal with some random person but it’s fine.
Yeah we did like a campfire with like marshmallows yesterday and that was fun. One cool thing that they’ve done is they put like a rope that goes from our campsite to the bathroom that we can follow and that’s been really helpful especially at night time to follow that and we don’t get lost in the woods because that would be bad. It’s been pretty great and today we’re going canoeing and I’m so excited because I love canoeing so we’ll see how it goes.
Elizabeth Page:
I’m Elizabeth Page. I’m with Wilderness Inquiry. We’re a nonprofit based out of St. Paul focused on getting all people of all abilities backgrounds, ages and abilities into the outdoors. We take all sorts of people with different disabilities or different levels of ability into the outdoors and we love canoeing with people and so today we’re canoeing with state services for the blind and Lighthouse for Vital Living out of Duluth and we’re canoeing on the St. Croix River today and we’ll be paddling in canoes of up to 10 people and we’re really excited to canoe with people today and this is the exact sort of thing Wilderness Inquiry has a goal of doing is getting people with different levels of abilities like the folks from SSB and Lighthouse out into doing stuff they wouldn’t normally do like canoeing on the St. Croix River.
Jeff:
What I understand is you go to Patagonia, Glacier National Park all over the world in a sense.
Elizabeth Page:
Yeah so Wilderness Inquiry does do trips internationally and all over the U.S. We have people like trip assistants that will go with people who need extra assistance on those international trips but all of our trips are open to people of all abilities and we are super excited to help people get into those outdoor spaces that maybe there’s a barrier to in a normal situation.
Jeff:
How can people find Wilderness Inquiry?
Elizabeth Page:
Yeah so Wilderness Inquiry has a website WildernessInquiry.org and on there is all the information for our trips there’s information for scholarships for people who may need financial assistance and going on these trips and there’s also contacts so if you’re nervous about going on the trip or want more information you can reach out to one of the people at Wilderness Inquiry and we can give you a lot more information about individual trips.
George:
Hi my name is George, I’m a certified orientation mobility specialist and I am here with a large group of folk out camping and canoeing. We are giving opportunities to students who are blind and low vision to get out and enjoy the out of doors and I am here to aid them with orienting using their visual and non-visual skills in order to be successful and so far they’re having a great time. It’s a really excellent opportunity to hopefully get the students engaged with being in the out of doors. I think it’s so important for blind and low vision individuals in general and for young blind and low vision individuals in particular.
Jeff:
And there’s got to be about 10 tenths surrounding us right now and it seems like everyone’s just getting up for the morning here having their coffee and everything. That’s right.
George:
I’ve already had one cup and that’s why there’s some coffee left for everyone else.
Jeff:
Wilderness Inquiry are with us too.
George:
Yes they’re an excellent organization for out of door activities. We’ve had the opportunity to work with them in the past and it’s an excellent opportunity to work with them again now. They do a really good job of making sure that the campers are involved and as independent as possible in the context of setting up their tents, cooking the food. It’s really a great opportunity for them to get a genuine feel of what it’s like to be camping rather than to be served.
Jeff:
Well George, enjoy your canoe trip today.
George:
I will do. Thank you.
Maddy:
Hi, I’m Maddy and so far the camping trip has been really fun. It’s been great just getting to talk to people and getting to know people better. A lot of people here I’ve maybe met before but haven’t really gotten to talk to them so it’s kind of nice the groups on the smaller side so I feel like I really got to know everyone better. It’s been fun getting to you know just camp and spend time in nature. It was fun getting to make a fire. I’ve never done that before so that’s pretty exciting. When it came to the meals we all kind of got to help a little bit here and there. Most meals we all had to help with dishes so some people all you know it’s not the funnest thing but we had to do it. It was good.
Also it was kind of nice getting to hear all the you know sounds of the trees and the wind or sometimes you’d hear you know the bugs or They were just, frogs and stuff and it was just kind of relaxing, just getting to listen and fall asleep to sounds of nature. While they were unloading the canoes and stuff, they taught everyone how to use the paddles and to paddle and they taught us the forward stroke, paddling forward and paddling backward and then how to brake. I felt like they were pretty good at describing how to do it and it’s pretty simple but it’s a really good job of teaching everyone how to do it and I felt like everyone felt pretty comfortable after they taught us how to paddle because it’s like okay, it’s not that scary. We’ll say we got the boats in the water, we could go and feel them and kind of explore them a little before we actually got in.
Gabe:
Hello, my name is Gabe. I’m here with Wilderness Inquiry. This is a really fun part because taking these boats off of the trailer and putting them anywhere requires a minimum of six people. So this is kind of a part of the process that really shows Wilderness Inquiry, outdoor leaders like working together as a team, unloading these boats, moving them around. It’s a coordinated effort, it’s something we’ve done a lot and practiced a lot.
It’s I think a really fun thing for people that witness. These boats weigh between 300 to 400 pounds each and there’s kind of slight variations in models throughout the year. These are hand-built cedar strip North Canoes, 24 feet long. So it takes a full team of at least six people to move them around.
Jeff:
Wow, and we’ll experience it.
Gabe:
We’ll experience it, yep.
Jeff:
You don’t get stage fright, do you?
Gabe:
Oh, not really.
Jeff:
You got an audience.
Gabe:
You ready?
Elizabeth:
Ready.
Gabe:
All right, so we got three down there, three over here.
Elizabeth:
And you want to come a little bit closer to the point.
Gabe:
Is everybody not ready? Oh, let’s move the crowd back a little bit about 10 feet because we’re going to be rolling it. Hands on boat, everybody not ready? Let’s go, up and out on three, one, two, three.
Let’s go up the chest and we’re going to roll towards myself and Kathleen on three. One, two, three.
Kathleen:
My name is Kathleen Murphy. It’s my first summer as an outdoor leader with wilderness inquiry. Our nonprofit was founded in 1978 when some folks were trying to get the boundary waters area motorized. And their argument was that women, the disabled and the elderly could only enjoy that area if it’s motorized. And this guy named Greg fought against that and he brought a group of disabled people into the boundary waters and proved that you don’t need roads, you don’t need cars, you don’t need any of that stuff. Instead of changing nature to fit your needs, you can just bring in stuff to help you out.
So that’s what we do. We brought for this group specifically guidelines, extra lights, LED lights for the picnic tables and to mark hazards and stuff. I know the kids have special canes for hiking, stuff like that, that we can bring in to make the outdoors accessible to people of all different backgrounds and abilities. So that’s something that’s really special to be a part of.
Gabe:
And then when you get to your seat, you’re going to slide over all the way so your hip is basically touching the side of the canoe. So on some of the wider seats, there’s going to be a good amount of space in between you and your seat partner because they’re going to be all the way over to the side of the canoe. We’re going about five miles today. That’s going to be about two to three hours. We’re going to stop for lunch about halfway through. One place that we’ll visit on the way before lunch is a pictograph location. Does anybody know what a pictograph is?
Maddy:
So while we were canoeing, there was something interesting or unique along the shoreline. The guides did a great job of pointing it out and giving us a little bit of audio description of what was going on in our surroundings. So that was great. All one rock formation.
Gabe:
So a pictograph is like a painting on a rock that was made by Native Americans a long time ago. A very, very long time ago. So we want to kind of acknowledge that while we’re here, we are on Native lands. We are on the traditional ancestral and temporary homeland of the Dakota people and the Ojibwe people.
And we’re going to see what is a very, very sacred location to the… We’re going to visit that location today. I believe one of the pictographs is a fish. There are several others. They’re very faint. I know one of the pictographs is a depiction of a fish and there are several others. But they’re so old that they’re starting to get a little bit faint. The paint is made out of sturgeon liver oil and iron oxide from like iron ore. So it has kind of a reddish color to it.
Maddy:
Before we ended our canoe trip, we made a pit stop at this waterfall hike. So the path kind of started right under this bridge where there were cars going by. Hear them. It was pretty loud. But then as we started going on the path, the path was kind of rough. There were rocks and roots and it was pretty uneven. So it was kind of fun and interesting and kind of a challenge at some points.
Jeff:
How do you like the altering cane?
Amy:
I love this so much.
Jeff:
How does it help you?
Amy:
It will like with like the hiking and stuff. Because you can like lean on it and stuff. So for like going down like spots where it was uneven, I could put the cane down, know how low down it was, hold on to it, brace myself and step my foot down. But no, this is like the best hiking cane ever because for this trail, I would not have made it without this cane. And I’m dead serious about this.
Maddy:
It was a fun experience and eventually you kind of stopped hearing the cars like going by and eventually you start hearing the sounds of the waterfall and it was pretty exciting. It’s like, oh, like we’re about to see this cool waterfall.
And there were these, you know, little wooden like platforms and bridges you got to walk across at some points. And it was just fun to, yeah, once again be like surrounded by nature and experience the waterfall. Like as we were hiking, it just, the sound of the waterfall just kept on getting louder and louder. And it was like, oh, just exciting. Cause we were like, oh, are we there yet? Are we there yet? And then eventually it was so loud and you could kind of feel the water and you’re like, oh, we made it.
Alex Rutts:
My name is Alex Rutts. I work for Wilderness Inquiry. I’m an outdoor co-leader there. I started beginning of this summer and just been doing a lot of day trips with schools and younger kids.
Also longer trips like this with a lot of military families and Native American families. I’m going to school in Ely for outdoor leadership. They got a little community college up there and kind of just specializes in outdoor programs and learned a lot there and just enough to make me really enjoy this job and I’m learning a lot here. I knew about the spot from the high school trip and I noticed we were taking the exact same route. So I thought, why not see if the trail is still good and I think they really enjoyed it.
Maddy:
Overall, the Wilderness Inquiry trip was really awesome and I felt like it was really good. Like, you know, for first time campers, it was nice just because yes, you’re camping, but also you have the Wilderness Inquiry staff there to like support you and kind of make you feel more comfortable. And the staff was great. Like you could tell that they definitely were trained and open to any sort of feedback. They always were asking, oh, is there a way to do this better, a way to do that better?
Like, how can we improve this experience? Like not just on this trip, but also like for future trips and it was just a really great way for blind people to go camping, especially for the first time. So I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s interested. And if you’re interested in going on a Wilderness Inquiry trip, you can check them out at WildernessInquiry.org. Definitely go check out what’s going on at State Services for the Blind because there’s always some sort of upcoming event coming up that people are welcome to join in. There’s always a great way to connect with others and learn something new.
Shane DeSantis:
Again, great to be here, great to have good group of students and good group of staff making this an impactful event for our youth.
Jeff:
To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact Shane.desantis@state.mn.us. That’s Shane.desantis@state.mn .us. Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Vogue Rehab and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. I want to thank you for listening and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities