Losing your vision doesn't have
to mean missing out on the chance
to enjoy a deep connection with nature.
In this episode, Ed Haines speaks with Ron Peterson,
who shares his experiences as a tour guide
for the Tijuana River Estuary in Southern California.
I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents.
Welcome to the show, both of you.
Thank you, Ricky. Thank you very much.
It is so good to have you both here.
Ed, you are an avid gardener
and I couldn't think of a more appropriate person
to chat with Ron.
And Ron, I know you've always had a really deep relationship
with nature going all the way back to childhood
as a member of the Boy Scouts.
And of course, that relationship continues to evolve
after vision loss.
You know, I think it helps people so much to hear
just how incredible nature is
and that there really is more than one way
to connect with it.
So I am very much looking forward
to hearing about your journey, Ron,
and how you ended up doing
what you currently do at the Estuary.
So yeah, I will turn it over to Ed and Ron.
Yeah, thanks Ricky, and Ron,
thanks for being with us today.
It really, this is a great topic.
It's really important
and also a whole lot of fun for me
just to talk about the natural world.
Now you work at the Tijuana River Estuary,
which after doing some research online, it's a large area
with a lot of unique features, particularly with regard
to bird and plant life.
So how did the concept of your tours, you give a tour,
it's called An Eye-Opening Experience Without Sight,
and you're a docent and you give a tour
for folks a couple times a month, I believe.
So how did that concept of your tour evolve?
Well, I lost my vision
about five and a half years ago,
and I had been working at the Estuary
for two or three years,
and that was a very special, a very special experience
for me working as a volunteer at the Estuary.
Volunteering is very important to me overall.
But when I lost my vision, I wasn't able to do some
of the things I was doing out there, planting native plants
and removing invasives and working on the trails.
And that was very frustrating, very difficult for me
to adjust to, I couldn't do this anymore.
So I got together a few years ago with the staff
and we started thinking about different ways
that I could continue to volunteer.
And the idea came that how about becoming a docent
and talking to visitors about the native plants there
in the estuary in a completely different way
as a blind person introducing our visitors
to our native plants
emphasizing the other four senses besides sight.
It's a great idea. It really worked out well.
It turns out it's very unusual.
I don't know of any other situation where people do this.
It's become very popular
and it has given me a great deal of joy
sharing with people this experience.
So it's worked out really well.
Well, that's great.
And you know,
why don't you tell us a little bit about
how you share the experience of nature with others
and I think I read somewhere you identify
something like 40 different plants,
so that must have accumulating that body
of knowledge must have been pretty big job to begin with.
And then communicating that body of knowledge
to sighted persons is another whole skillset.
So how does the experience work for folks?
What do you do when you take them out on the estuary?
Right.
Well, it's about a one and a half hour walk,
nature walk the first Saturday of every month.
And anywhere from two to 20 visitors show up.
They go to the website and they find out this opportunity,
and I give them an introduction to the Tijuana Estuary,
the history and the management
and all about the Kumeyaay, the Native Americans
that were the first people here in the San Diego area.
And then we walk around for an hour or so,
and I visit about 15
or 18 different plants, the ones
that I think are the most interesting.
Okay. And what happens is, I mean,
these plants are beautiful to look at,
but also, they all feel different.
They have different textures
and the leaves are different.
And they have different veins and different shapes
and different margins, edges.
And also many of them have distinct smells.
And some of them even have sounds like the bladder pod.
They have these pods that rattle and you shake them.
Okay. And the cottonwoods,
when the wind is blowing, there's kind of
a wonderful sound, kind of a whispering sound
that comes from the leaves
and the bees in the lemonade berry, the buzzing.
So it's really about how they feel.
It's about how they smell and how they sound.
So I've learned, when I worked at the Estuary
before I lost my vision,
I learned quite a few plants by sight,
but then a few years ago I said, you know what?
I'm gonna learn how to identify
and enjoy these plants with these other senses.
So I worked on that for a while.
So that's how we were able to put this together.
Well, that's fantastic.
You know, I actually live near a nature sanctuary
and I'm always amazed that folks speed through it
when they're touring it
or there's even a drive.
They can drive through it.
They never get outta their car.
You know, they may roll down a window occasionally,
and even the walking trails, people don't take their time
to really interact with the plant life in ways
that it sounds like you're introducing.
So I'm just curious, you know, what do people come away from
that experience on your nature walk?
What are some of the things they come away with
and do they learn anything about themselves?
Well, one thing I do
during the walk is I always take three or four minutes,
we stop at one of the most beautiful plants.
It's the California sage brush.
And right about there, I stop for five minutes
and talk to the people about blindness.
And how the experience that I'm sharing
with them is important to, many of my visitors are blind.
I have special tour groups that come in that are blind.
So I explain how this experience can help the sighted
appreciate nature with all senses, all of the senses,
and how the blind community can learn
to appreciate nature without sight.
So I think that's something that I share
with my visitors and they walk away
with a better appreciation of
how the blind can still enjoy life by taking advantage
of these other senses
and how the sighted community can enjoy life more
by taking care of all five senses.
Does that make sense? It does.
And it's almost like you're saying, you know,
mother nature kind of invented the concept
of universal design, right?
There's something there for everybody.
Yeah. That's fantastic.
I did wanna ask you, Ron, just briefly, what sort
of advice would you give to folks
who maybe have lost some vision
and who also really value being immersed in nature,
whether it's getting out hiking, backpacking,
or doing whatever it is they do.
And what advice would you give
to folks if they're concerned
that future vision loss will inhibit that ability?
You've obviously overcome that issue
and you haven't let vision get in your way
of experiencing nature.
So what advice would you give to folks who are concerned
that that might be a problem?
Well, you know, for me,
it's partly about getting back to nature that has helped me,
but it's also about the spirit of giving,
that volunteer spirit.
And that's something that I learned from my father
when I was very young.
He instilled in me the love of nature
and also the spirit of giving.
And so most of my life I've tried to
be involved in volunteer activities.
So what that did for me is when I lost my vision,
I kind of reconnected with that concept.
I was pretty depressed for about a year or so.
For most of a year,
I was kind of down in the dumps having lost my vision.
But what happened was I reconnected with my love
of nature and this value
that he instilled in me of volunteering.
By putting those ingredients together, it really helped me
to become, for my life, become more full.
And I think that's a lesson for other people
when they lose their vision, just giving to others can kind
of help you get away from your own problems
and to think about others.
And then I think it's about thinking, what are your skills?
What are your various interests?
In my case, it was love of nature
and combining that with the spirit of giving
and the spirit of giving is kind of the special sauce.
And I think that helped me to overcome
that initial period.
And I think it could help others as well.
Ron, it's a really great concept, that idea
of not just being a passive participant in nature,
but taking an active role.
And it sounds like being active in nature
and giving back to the natural world
and to other people has helped you maintain your exposure
to nature itself, which is just a wonderful idea.
So thank you very much for that.
There's a couple of other elements
to the equation that helped me.
Not just the, I mean the spirit of giving is kind
of a special sauce, but the love of nature,
also, I learned to reach out and ask for help.
And that's something that I wasn't really
as good at as I should have been.
But that's something that's very important to someone
who becomes blind, is knowing to ask for help.
Also, my relationship with the Braille Institute,
I learned many of the tools to get along as a blind person.
And Hadley was a huge help to me to help me
learn the various tools to get along with outside.
But the special sauce in all of this, to me, has been
the spirit of giving, of helping others
that I learned from my father many, many years ago.
Well, that's just great advice
and thanks for mentioning Hadley.
I'm glad we've been of some help.
And when you mentioned the Braille Institute,
they have an office in San Diego, so that's wonderful.
They could assist you.
And speaking of assistance, that's a great segue.
I do know from having seen your videos,
you do have a dog guide.
So I just was curious about, you know, the role
of your dog guide in your tours
and how having a dog guide has maybe helped you
stay active in the natural environment.
Well, I'm glad you asked.
That's Gidget.
Gidget has been my guide dog now for over two years.
She's an amazing animal.
I highly recommend the guide dog for folks.
We go hiking in the estuary together,
Gidget and I, also, the Estuary
is about almost a mile from our house.
So every time I go to the estuary,
she gets me there and back.
But during the walk itself,
a guide dog goes one speed, guide dog speed,
whatever that speed might be.
And, you know, when I'm leading the group,
we're kind of strolling.
So I heal her during the hike.
And I worked there for so many years, so I know my way
around pretty well, almost by memory and by feel.
And then once in a while, I'll take the elbow
of someone if I get a little bit confused.
So I'm healing my guide dog while I'm doing the nature walk.
But she gets me there and she gets me back home.
And also, she and I go for hikes
and in the Estuary together often.
She's living her best life as a guide dog.
I can tell you that.
That's wonderful. She loves it there
almost as much as I do. Yeah, I'm sure she does.
And I just had two part question really.
And it's about your functional adjustment to vision loss,
and then about your need for a natural environment
and your ability to participate fully
in that environment again after your vision loss.
I'm just curious, it's kind of chicken
or the egg type of question.
Did your need
to participate in the natural environment drive your need
to acquire adjustment skills like cane training
or using a dog guide?
Or did acquiring those skills then enable you to return back
to the natural environment, or did it all happen together?
That is a good question.
I'd have to say both.
I love to be out in nature and walking around,
and that's one of the reasons I got a guide dog.
And so, yes, the need for being out in nature
led me to develop additional skills,
or in this case, obtain a guide dog.
But also this dog's helped me do things
that I wouldn't normally do.
Like, for example,
I'm much more comfortable about taking the trolley
and the bus and going into downtown San Diego
with the guide dog.
But I guess it was probably the need for nature,
for being with nature.
That actually was one of the reasons
that I got the guide dog.
Interesting.
Okay.
That's an answer to my question.
That's what I was curious about.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell our listeners
or tell folks who have lost some vision, who'd like
to get back out there and experience the natural world?
I would sure recommend that people get out
and to the nearest park or go for hikes.
You can find someone to help you with a hike,
get a guide dog, learn cane skills.
There's so much out there to smell,
to touch, to hear.
It's not just about sight.
So that would be my advice to others
and it sure helped me. Perfect.
Thank you, Ron. Yes.
Thank you, Ron.
It really sounds like,
and maybe you experienced nature this way before,
but really leaning into that,
so leaning into it isn't just about what you're looking at,
it's what you're hearing, it's what you're smelling,
what you can touch.
It feels like a much deeper relationship with nature.
And so if people are struggling
with their vision loss journey, it's definitely,
it can come out of the blue for some people
and it's not an easy adjustment.
But I loved what you said about
paying attention to what you're finding in nature,
going on these hikes,
and in your case, giving back to people, leaning into that,
that helped you to stop thinking about the woe is me
parts of it, which I really think people will appreciate.
Ron, thank you so much for stopping by
and sharing your story.
And the next time I'm in Southern California,
I certainly hope to come and enjoy your tour.
Yeah, me too. I would love
to have both of you.
Well, I'll give you both a special tour
of these beautiful native plants of Southern California.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
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