Did You Hear That Echo?
2004 Boaz Rauchwerger
A few years back an interesting incident took place in an elementary school in Detroit. Although located in a less than desirable neighborhood, the school was staffed by some wonderful teachers.
The school was not only inhabited by teachers and students, but also a few of the neighborhood mice. It's not that the mice caused any great harm. The students, many living in difficult circumstances, were used to having some around.
The incident I'm referring to happened one day in a particular classroom when such a mouse was making enough of a racket to distract the students. The teacher, along with her students, looked all over the room to try to find him. It was no use. This mouse was very illusive.
Finally, to everyone's amazement, little Stevie said, "I can find him." The teacher consented. Within minutes, Stevie crawled around the floor and located the mouse in the corner trash can. Blind virtually since birth, Stevie's heightened awareness of sound helped him find the mouse.
You know Stevie. He later went on to become famous in the world of music. Stevie Wonder's heightened awareness of sound helped him create a career of vibrant, colorful music that was full of life and joyous positivity.
In a way, Stevie Wonder was able to see without eyes. What if you were a dolphin? What if you lived in the murky, black waters of the ocean? Your eyes would be useless. In order to find food, and stay close to other dolphins, these mammals have evolved a process called "Echo Location" to substitute for their eyes.
Dolphins produce a high-pitched click. When these clicks hit an object, a portion of the sound echoes back. The dolphins listen for the time it takes for the sound to come back and estimate the distance.
In hunting for fish, dolphins move their heads so they can point the clicks toward different parts of the fish. Some of these clicks will reflect off the skin of the fish and some will actually bounce off internal organs and the skin on the other side. The process is like a simplified version of a medical ultrasound probe.
Bats fly in dark caves in the same way. They send out their radar signals, listen for the echoes, and they make sure they don't crash into other bats or into the walls of the cave.
The reason that I'm bringing this to your attention is the fact that humans, like Stevie Wonder, are capable of doing incredible things, including the process of echo location I've just described in dolphins and bats.
I recently saw an amazing Discovery Channel documentary called "More Than Human." It illustrated the process of echo location in blind people. It featured a blind man named Dan Kish who decided that his lack of sight was not going to keep him from living life to the fullest.
He studied the process of echo location and, through the use of mouth clicks, developed his ability to locate and identify items around him to an amazing extent. Like the dolphins and bats, he would look toward an object, make a series of mouth clicks, and identify the size and closeness of the object.
In time he was able to take comfortable walks by himself and even take bike rides. He took that activity even further by getting an off-road bike and riding on trails in the hills near his home. This was by himself, without a sighted person leading the way.
The documentary told Dan's story and how he has taught other blind people the process of echo location. An experiment was conducted for the program with one of Dan's students, Juan. He was seated in Dan's back yard. An aluminum pole was set up behind him with an aluminum-framed umbrella at the top of the pole.
As the cameras rolled, Juan was asked if there was anything around him. He made a series of mouth clicks and stated that there was some kind of pole behind him and that there was some form of cover at the top of the pole. Then he said that there was another pole in the vicinity with something small at the end of it.
He was right on all accounts. He had identified the pole with the umbrella at the top of it. He had also identified the boom pole that held the microphone at its end. This pole was part of the equipment used by the camera crew during the filming. It was an amazing example of echo location.
In another part of the documentary, Dan and his students were shown riding on a mountain bike trail. A group of adults, all blind, having a great time riding bikes as if nothing was wrong. If the process had not been explained, I would have thought it was trick photography.
So, if these people can literally see without eyes, what could you and I do if we simply deleted the word "can't" from our mental dictionaries? All of us have amazing abilities. All we have to do is open our minds, listen very closely, and we'll hear the sound of great possibilities.
An Affirmation of Possibilities
I open my mind every day to the great talents and possibilities that are within me.
Article reproduced with permission from Boaz Rauchwerger. You may reprint any of these articles in any publication or Web site so long as you credit Boaz Rauchwerger as the author and include this Web site address, www.Boazpower.com.