Trevor realized he was going to have to gain new skills in order to have any hope of living on his own. The first task was learning how to use a cane. Employing this special tool for the blind got him outside his door, but it didn’t do much to open up his world. He was forced to move slowly and was constantly depending upon others for directions and information. With each new day it became more evident that he was no longer the master of his world. Even the act of purchasing groceries or coffee emphasized his dependence. Although a blind person can distinguish a quarter from a nickel, there is no real difference in paper money. Thus, Trevor had to trust others not to take advantage of him.
His friends would not give up on Trevor. They kept dragging him out of his dark world by finding ways to include him in their experiences. As he felt more like a passenger or fifth wheel, their efforts brought the man little encouragement. When a friend offered to take him to hear Erik Weihenmayer speak, the bottom really dropped out. It seemed like a slap in the face.
Weihenmayer had gone blind as a child but decided he was not going to let sightlessness stop him from being completely involved in the world. Taking on any new challenge that he was given, he found a way to try almost all the regular activities of youth. In high school, he became a champion wrestler and discovered he had a knack for rock climbing. In both of those seemingly very different sports, he found his touch was so sensitive he could feel holds that others couldn’t see. After completing college and landing a teaching position, he used summers to hone his climbing talents. He’d come to Charlotte to talk about meeting his ultimate goal of doing something no blind person had ever accomplished: scaling Mount Everest.
The last thing Trevor wanted was to hear a blind person speak. He already knew the challenges of daily life, so why would he want to listen to another blind person talk about living in a dark world? Yet because his friend wouldn’t stop nagging him, Trevor grudgingly agreed to attend the event. Surprisingly it was an illuminating moment. The words he heard that night provided the blind man with a new vision.
“A spark of greatness exists in all people, but only by touching that spark to adversity’s flame does it blaze into the force that fuels our lives and the world.”
Weihenmayer’s words were not just something to think about; they were a challenge. If this man could climb the seven highest peaks in the world, then there was hope. As feeling sorry for what Trevor had lost served no purpose, it was time to inventory what he had left and build a few new dreams.
After the program, the two men met. As they exchanged stories of their lives and challenges, Weihenmayer gave Trevor a verbal seed that took root. From time to time it’s OK to be foolish. After all, it was foolish for a blind man to challenge Mount Everest. Everyone told him it couldn’t be done, and yet Weihenmayer found a way to do it. In the process, he inspired thousands to try something that others told them they’d never be able to do. So what foolish thing could Trevor attempt that would help him regain his value and self-worth?
Trevor had recently gone on hikes through the local woods with a friend. Though doing anything at a slow pace was against his nature, and he stumbled time and time again, he found an unexpected joy in being away from the city and hearing the music of a new world. When he’d rushed down mountains on skis or bikes, when he’d raced cars, he had been in too much of a hurry to note a bird’s song or the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind. Yet when he was walking along a trail, he heard all that and more. A small lizard racing along a rock drew his attention, as did the almost silent footsteps of a squirrel climbing a tree. To go along with the “music” of nature were smells that brought visions of beauty he had never before noticed. The more he walked and the deeper into the woods he traveled, the more his senses burst to life. He soon discovered that by listening to his own voice, he could sense how far he was from a tree or a cliff face.
In 2008, Weihenmayer’s challenge to living a bit foolishly and defy others’ limited expectations propelled Trevor to seize a new goal and dream a new dream. He was going to become the first blind person to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail solo. At first his friends and family cautioned against attempting something that “foolish.” After all, a lot of sighted people had died trying to hike this challenging trail. But thanks to his new confidence, they began to believe in him. As he bought the equipment needed for the task, a local outfitter helped him choose the best equipment for his needs.
Trevor had no goals beyond completing his mission. He wasn’t looking at this as a career opportu-nity; he simply saw the trek as a chance to reclaim his independence. If he were able to finish the more than two thousand miles, he would no longer be just blind Trevor Thomas; he would be a man who once again had value.
The Appalachian Trail experience was more difficult than he could have imagined. He fought off cold, heat, rain, and snow. He slipped and fell and had to pull himself up more times than he could count. Isolation spread like a haunting fog magnifying his fears. He had encounters with bears, coyotes, raccoons, snakes, and insects. He marched through illness and hunger. Day after day there was the fear of making a wrong turn. And even though he grew tired of sleeping in the damp, cold woods and the injuries that accompanied his many falls, he never gave up. Six months after taking his first step on the impossible mission, he proved everyone wrong and finished. As others celebrated his accomplishment, the question asked most was, “What are you going to do next?” Most hoped Trevor would opt to find a real job and a new hobby. Instead he embraced another round of “foolishness” and signed onto the challenge of trekking the Pacific Crest Trail. This trail, because of its varying climate and terrain, was even more challenging than the Appalachian Trail. When he finished at the Canadian border with team members he had convinced to go with him, he realized he had found his real passion. The dangers and challenges he faced had helped him restoke his thirst for living.
Thanks to the publicity of being the first blind person to conquer America’s two most famous hiking trails, in the small world of extreme hikers, he was famous. A host of different companies sought his endorsements for their equipment. Yet to continue to grow his new income source, he was going to have to face even more difficult challenges. After navigating swamps and deserts to get his juices flowing, in 2011, Trevor flew west to take on the Colorado Trail.
For the uninformed, the Colorado Trail may seem like a cakewalk when compared to the twenty-one hundred miles a person has to cover to complete the Appalachian Trail or the twenty-six hundred miles, starting in Mexico and ending in Canada, that make up the Pacific Crest Trail. After all, the Colorado Trail is just 489 miles long. It begins in Denver and ends in Durango. Yet because of the steep cliffs, grueling grades, deep snowfields, and bears and mountain lions, few sighted people take on this extreme challenge. Not only does it offer a dozen different ways to die but also the path is not well defined, and it is easy to miss the trail markers. One wrong turn makes it almost impossible to find your way back. In other words, it was the trail of Trevor’s dreams.
Trevor flew to Denver to meet up with an experienced, sighted hiker who was going to be his guide. When the man didn’t show, Trevor decided to make the trek on his own. It didn’t take long for him to discover he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Facing failure for the first time in his hiking career, he returned home wondering if he had hit a wall that couldn’t be climbed.
Over the course of several years of walking along trails, Trevor had honed almost batlike skills. He could actually tell distances and sense grades with his voice and ears. But those skills did no good at noting obstacles in his path, such as downed trees and rock slides, and they couldn’t alert him to predatory animals. So the extreme trails—the ones he really wanted to challenge—could not be managed without eyes.
Once back home, Trevor began to analyze how he could continue to maintain his independence while meeting the punishing challenges brought on by the likes of the Colorado Trail. It seemed that adding a permanent human membe
r to his team was the only answer. Yet by doing that, wasn’t he admitting his blindness was a limiting factor in pursuing his dreams? And, as there were now so many people with sight limitations looking to him as their hero, wouldn’t acknowledging that he was not able to pursue his dreams independently cause them to limit their lives as well? Before giving up and giving in by seeking out a human for a partner, Trevor decided to see if a guide dog might work as his hiking companion.
As he was blind but obviously very mobile and motivated to live independently, the task of qualifying and receiving a guide dog seemed easy. But Trevor quickly discovered that most organizations were not interested in matching him with a trained dog. It seemed as though guide dogs were for blind people who lived in urban areas. He was told time and time again that a dog simply couldn’t learn the skills needed to attempt dangerous treks through the wilderness. Only one organization, Guide Dogs for the Blind, gave him a chance to explain his vision. After evaluating his goals and needs, the school began the task of finding a dog that was athletic enough to keep up with the country’s most famous blind hiker. It would be an agile black Lab that best fit the qualifications.
Tennille was athletic, strong, energetic, and smart. But she also was blessed with another trait that made her the perfect match for Trevor; she was an instinctive problem solver. After a trip west and two weeks of bonding and instruction on the Guide Dogs for the Blind campus, the man and dog became a team. During that time, his trainer, Larissa, realized that it would be impossible to teach Trevor everything he would need to know regarding backcountry navigation. So she taught him how Tennille learned so that he could continue to work with her. With the initial training finished, the pair flew to North Carolina where the real work began.
For the first few weeks, Trevor and Tennille met the challenges of Charlotte. Within days the man discovered the dog had put him in the fast lane. Unlike with his cane, with the dog as his guide, he was getting from place to place almost effortlessly. But he wondered how this would translate to the woods.
Tennille understood curbs, stop signs, and cars. She could warn Trevor about all the obstacles found in city life. But the trails were a different matter. She was going to have see signs and take him to them. She was going to have to warn him of low tree branches and dangerous ice. She had to recognize rock slides and guide the man away from a thousand-foot drop-off while traversing a trail only eighteen inches wide. She was also going to have to recognize dangerous predators both large and small. To train her to face elements found only in the isolated wilderness, Trevor had to expose the dog to all kind of different situations in the controlled environments he knew. Would she be able to assimilate all the different and varying dangers of nature in order to allow him to pursue his dreams of taking on the country’s most challenging trails without another human? It didn’t take the dog long to pass every test Trevor created. Now it was time for the dog to teach the man.
Trevor had exceeded all the expectations for a blind person because of his thirst for independence, but Tennille was not a tool; she was a team member. He was going to have to trust her as much as she trusted him. When she stopped, he was going to have to value her judgment that something was wrong rather than just order her forward. He found this out the hard way in a swamp. When Tennille stopped, Trevor pushed on, and Tennille refused; he soon realized she was right. If he had moved forward, he would have stepped on a rattlesnake. That made a deep impression. From then on, if the Lab stopped, he would trust her judgment and stop, too.
As the two became a team, and as they spent more time alone in the woods, Trevor began to talk to Tennille as if she were another person. He would explain almost everything they found along the trails. Within a few months and several hundred miles of walking, he discovered the dog’s vocabulary was growing. By the time the man felt secure enough to challenge the Colorado Trail, the dog knew and understood more than five hundred words.
Walking any trail is a matter of connecting the dots. You have to go from one marker or landmark to another. In places like Colorado, the extreme weather changes and the storms that come with them—felled trees, mud, and rock slides—could change the course of creeks and make the markers more difficult to find. Even when you can see the landscape, it is all but impossible to figure out which direction to go. But if you can’t see and you come across a rock slide and have to make a detour, the challenge is magnified. One wrong turn and you are completely lost. For a hiker with only the food he can carry on his back, the survival clock ticks quickly as he frantically tries to find a landmark pointing him in the right direction. This is what makes extreme hiking so dangerous and why it also provides such a rush. The deeper into the wilderness you go, the more you live on the edge between life and death.
Tennille proved to be a better partner than most humans. She sensed danger well before a man could. In fact, the dog’s presence likely drove off most of the curious predators before the man could even sense their presence on the challenging Colorado Trail. She also easily found the trail signs and rock cairns, navigated around rock slides, and warned him of all tree limbs that could have knocked him off his feet. She had no problems finding the right place to cross creeks or banks of snow. She even told him when it was time to rest. Not that she ever got tired; she just made sure he took his breaks. As they sat together on top of mountain peaks, he got the idea she was marveling at the sights he could not see. With each new day and adventure, the dog was as thrilled as he was to be hitting the trail. Most important, they did what most thought was impossible by completing one of the nation’s most dangerous treks.
Trevor has hiked more than twenty thousand miles in his career, but none have been more rewarding than the past three and a half years the pair has hiked together, completing six thousand miles and five thru hikes and summiting countless mountains, including Colorado’s tallest peak. Trevor has learned to completely trust Tennille’s perceptions and judgment. She knows the dangers he can’t see and protects him from thousand-foot drops, bears, and cars.
This marriage of man and dog and the incredible adventures they have lived have inspired thousands of disabled people to push society in recognizing that limits should not be placed on those with disabilities. Because of his amazing accomplishments, Trevor has become a media star. Through television, social media, and print stories, he has also become a hero to thousands. He founded Team FarSight Foundation to give blind kids a chance to gain independence and value through wilderness experiences. Yet his teaming with the black Lab has done something else, too. It has stretched the boundaries society once applied to guide dogs. In an extreme fashion Trevor has proved that a well-trained canine is constantly growing and expanding his role. As Tennille has shown, there are no limits to where guide dogs can go or what they can learn. And with a guide dog leading the way, Trevor goes to places few have been, and, in his own way, sees things only a handful of people have ever seen.
Unconditional
The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.
Brian Tracy
Love ignites fires that provide light in the darkest places on earth. That love has the power to create miracles if it is accompanied by just a bit of faith. And when the love is strong enough, even those of whom little is expected can touch the world in ways few can fathom.
The special love between a father and a son creates a bond unlike any other. It has been written about in books, movie, and plays. In the early 1960s, Paul Petersen even scored a hit record with the song “My Dad.” The lyrics in that song spoke volumes about what it meant to have a father who was not just a role model but also the person who most deeply believed in your potential. One line is, “When I was small, I felt ten foot tall when I was by his side.” There are many men who have invested so much faith in their children they deserve that kind of honor, and one of these fathers is Phil Stevens.
On a very special day, Phil welcomed three boys into his home. Two of the triplets w
ere healthy, but the other—a boy whom the Stevenses named Jared—was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that could have severely limited his life. In this case, this dad was not going to let that happen.
Cerebral palsy strikes two in every one thousand children. There are various levels of the disease. In its most severe form, the cruel intruder robs its host of muscle and voice control and mental development. Because of the awkwardness in movement and speech, they are often avoided. It can be a very lonely world where isolation is the norm even when surrounded by a crowd.
As he grew, Jared faced a number of physical roadblocks that inhibited his interaction with the world. His speech was also affected, making communication often difficult and frustrating. But mentally he was as sharp as a tack. His father wanted others to see the bright child with the quick wit, not the boy who had a body that functioned at the level of a sixth-month-old child. But how do you get people to look beyond a boy using a wheelchair? How do you get people to understand that inside that body is a brain that is actually functioning far above age level? How could he penetrate the walls and get others to realize that the thin young man with the bright eyes and crooked smile was a creative, dynamic force struggling to be recognized?
The first step in giving his son a full life was allowing him to be a part of the world. The Stevenses were not going to allow their son to miss out on the adventures his brothers were enjoying every day. So Jared, usually with his father, Phil, pushing him, was taken to ball games, restaurants, and on vacations, no matter how challenging. He was a part of sports teams and even became a Boy Scout. Although Jared was treated like everyone else wherever possible, there were limits to what his parents could accomplish. Those limits were not as much created by Jared’s physical limitations as by society’s views of those who are physically disabled, which were evident when the family was out in public.
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