Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. 'Nothing in particular,' she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter's sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.
-Helen Keller, Three Days to See (1933)
NB: Helen Keller was deaf-blind.
In a cab to the airport last Wednesday, I got talking with the driver and when he heard I was studying at American U, he warned me to watch out for all the "pretty rich girls". It made me feel a little sick - like I was expected to be attracted to girls because they were pretty and rich but that I somehow had something they didn't and I had to protect it from them. I wished I was at Mt.A. again where, I like to think, one would never hear such a comment.
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