http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1029268,00.html
As we went down I got goose bumps, despite the warm sunshine, as a flood of beautiful sights came to me. Jennifer was in front of me, guiding as usual, and she looked very good, just as I had always imagined, graceful and attractive. The trees were a deeper green than imagined and so tall. I never thought of them as much more than obstacles to be avoided. The way they stood in stark contrast to the white snow was so incredibly vivid.
Above the trees were the distant cliffs and higher still, the blue sky, not a cloud in it. I could see the different colours of the ridges and guess at what those colours represented. Yet, I only knew from logic that those cliffs were a couple of miles away rather than a couple of hundred yards as they appeared.
There were so few people on the slopes that I was able to ski, unguided, quite well, though I found that my mind and my body were struggling over which was in charge on the slopes. I had a TV reporter with me on the chairlift and I made the mistake of telling him that this day of skiing was "like having sex with the lights on". Of course, this was the soundbite with which they led their news story. I meant that skiing was a fantastic experience and one did not need sight to fully experience it, but at the same time the visual dimension was not to be ignored.
On at least half of the flights I catch I find myself in a conversation with the person sitting next to me. On a flight from Washington DC to Denver last week I had a conversation with a young woman from the DC area. We compared notes about our jobs without actually saying anything about what we did, then moved on to discussing what I can see. Inevitably, she asked what I could see of her. Since she was on my left side, I had not had the chance to look at her with my good right eye. I turned to face her and said I could see blonde hair and the colour of her clothing. She asked if I could tell what colour her eyes were and I said only up close. She then leaned up close and asked again. This is where it got interesting.
I have to be six inches or closer and I need a couple of seconds to stare to see any detail. I would term my visual range for seeing eyes "kissing distance".
It is quite unsettling looking into someone's eyes, especially when you aren't used to it. When Ms DC to Denver casually leaned close enough, I couldn't even stammer out the answer that her eyes were blue. I might have been less shocked if she had taken her shirt off and asked what I could see. I had never seen someone's eyes other than those of my family and it was very disconcerting. Although I was tongue-tied, she was very sweet about it and probably didn't notice I was flustered.
This was a very intimate experience and I can't fathom how sighted people go around seeing each other's eyes without being flustered too.
After the boys and Jennifer were asleep, I walked back up the hill, got my binoculars out of the car and headed for the recreation field, the most open place in camp. I had fallen asleep there many times with friends telling me about the stars. I laid down smack in the middle of the field and closed my eyes to reflect on being in this place in years past.
When I was ready, I opened my eyes. There were all these white dots, so very many white dots. When I looked through the binoculars, there were so many white dots I couldn't possibly count them. Back and forth I went, glasses on, glasses off, and they were the real thing - not my imagination, not a vision from a good author who made me think I was seeing them. The real thing, seemingly near enough to touch.
With my eye, I could count somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 stars. With the binoculars, I couldn't keep count. The stars were too dense and the limited field of vision made it hard to keep track of which ones I had already counted.
I lay there for an hour or so, not really aware of time but finally noticing around midnight it was getting chilly.
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