When I asked Luanne (5 days before the event) to be my partner for the TransRockies Run, a three-to-six day tandem adventure trail race through the Colorado Rocky Mountains, she jumped at the chance. “We live in a mobile world and when you aren’t a part of it, you’re really aware of it,” Luanne told me.  She confessed that my crazy proposal to run the trail race with me as her guide would quite possibly be her last chance to get onto the mountain trails and appreciate the pinhole images she could still see.

Frequently participants passed us saying, “You two are so sweet,” or, “You are such an inspiration!” Just wait till you get in our way, we joked. We’ll invite you to a fast race and then we’ll see who’s passing who.

The “You’re so sweet” comments, while well intended, seemed condescending to both of us.  I grew frustrated when I noticed people engaging in conversation with me but not Luanne while she stood right next to me. But Luanne understood them.

“Sometimes your job as the blind person becomes making others feel comfortable. They see blindness as a vulnerable state of being. And in some ways it is. We have a very basic instinct to protect ourselves. So it’s not surprising blindness brings up fear in people. Not necessarily fear of the person, but a fear of the possibility of that becoming them. People often say I just don’t know what I would do, if that were me.”

Luanne and I went on a journey that reshaped us both (in different ways). Our adventure helped redirect and redefine our sense of power and glory, really just reflections of the intimate, yet brief, encounters we had with beautiful people and nature along the gossamer route. We were two different people experiencing the same route in very different ways.  TransRockies was a gossamer web because it reminded us of the interconnectivity of all things. In my impatient-selfish moments, I remembered to connect to the real reason I was out there: Luanne (regardless of when or where we finished). Our team of two was a reminder for other participants to connect to the experience not the race. For Luanne, it was about connecting to nature in a way she might never again.

Read more on Folks.