Michael Hanson is going to take a hike. He's also going to be gone a long time - seven months.
He isn't planning to get lost, although some might suspect that he will.
Hanson is blind, after all, and heading out without a guide or guide dog.
He'll be carrying technology, though, designed to decrease the likelihood he'll lose his way.
Instead, the reason Hanson will be gone so long is that he is planning to cover a great distance.
Hanson plans to hike the Appalachian Trail. The trail, known in hiking circles as the "AT," is a 2,178-mile path that stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
Most of the trail winds through vast areas of wilderness. In some areas, however, it takes hikers along roads and through towns.
While most hikers hit the trail for a few days or weeks at a time, jumping on and off at various entry points, more serious hikers attempt to start and complete the trail straight through in one season. It's a feat that takes considerable forethought and time.
Hanson will start the trek from Georgia in early March and follow the path - and the spring weather - north.
He hopes to arrive at the trail's end in Maine in September, but is allowing himself the month of October as an extra cushion.
"This is a dream I've had for a long time," Hanson said. He started planning for the hike back in 2006.
Since then he's interviewed successful thru-hikers, hikers who traversed the trail in one season, including Bill Irwin.
In 1990, Irwin was the first blind person to
successfully hike the Appalachian Trail. He did so with his seeing-eye dog in nine months' time.
Hanson also has spoken with other hikers who tried to cover the distance in one run but failed. He's read books and charted his course with advice from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that works to conserve the trail.
Hanson, who lives in St. Louis Park, has been blind since infancy.
Nevertheless, he spent his childhood dreaming of adventure. "I read Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett," he said. "I always enjoyed being outdoors."
Despite his disability, Hanson is an avid outdoorsman. He has hiked around Mount Rainier, throughout Colorado and in the Shenandoah National Park. He loves to fish and hunt. In 2008, he shot a 900-pound bull elk. He is also a devoted geocacher.
"I have enough of an idea of what I'm getting myself into to minimize the shock of the first couple weeks," he said.
Even so, he admits that his first few days on the Appalachian Trail might be "a baptism of fire, or in this case, of rocks."
The Georgia start of the trail is notoriously uphill and rocky.
To help him stay on track, Hanson will use his white cane. He will also bring along some high tech gadgets operating with the Loadstone GPS program, a free, open-source program written by four visually-impaired programmers with the intention that it be specifically user-friendly for that population.
"It was developed by people who know what I'll be dealing with," Hanson said. The gadgetry, which works on his cell phone with the aid of an even smaller blue-tooth receiver, calls out voice commands every 100 feet.
It is also equipped with a compass. If the voice command tells Hanson that a trail shelter is 90 feet to the north, but he then starts walking toward the south, the gadget tells him he is going the wrong way. In his use of the program, Hanson has found its directions to be within 10 feet of correctness.
Hanson has been using the equipment since 2006, and his success with the program is one of the reasons he started to seriously think about hiking the Appalachian Trail.
"Until about 12 years ago," he said, "there weren't a lot of options for the visually impaired to be outside for an extended period of time alone."
There are similar systems, Hanson said, to what he has been using, but those cost about $8,000.
Because the Loadstone GPS system is a free download, however, it cut the cost of his equipment to about $1,000, a considerable savings considering roughly 70 percent of the visually impaired population is either unemployed or underemployed.
That statistic, Hanson said, "really makes living difficult for me and others who are visually impaired. When you know that you have a seven in 10 chance of being unemployed, you don't live the way you want. You spend money differently. You don't take as many risks, socially or financially, because that thought is always in the back of your mind."
For example, Hanson, who holds a master's degree in speech and language pathology, also has a law degree and is licensed to practice law in Minnesota. Currently, however, he works as a telemarketer.
The sighted community, he said, holds a lot of misperceptions about the visually impaired, which has contributed to that population's dismal employment numbers.
By hiking the Appalachian Trail, Hanson hopes to dispel many of those misguided ideas about what a blind person can and can not do.
"I want to change public awareness and perception," he said. "I want to change the life situations of the visually impaired. I want them to know there is technology out there that is useful and affordable."
To help spread his story, Hanson will keep a blog and post updates on Facebook whenever he reaches an Internet access point on the trail. He has also enlisted the help of a Mound man, Gary Steffens.
Steffens, a videographer, will accompany Hanson on the Appalachian Trail, shooting footage for a documentary film.
"A movie can really help change perceptions," Steffens said, "because viewers will be able to see what a visually impaired person can do. Doors are closed to the visually impaired because of our misunderstanding."
Many employers, Steffens said, shy from hiring visually impaired workers because they are uncertain as to what sort of special access, tools or technology blind employees might need.
"By introducing Mike through a movie, we can break down some of those stereotypes," he said.
Steffens and Hanson met about a year and a half ago. They were introduced by a mutual friend. The two hit it off and started planning their journey.
Steffens runs Fresh Images Video Productions out of his Lake Minnetonka area home. Yet he also works part time as a psychotherapist in Anoka.
Meeting Hanson, he said, was "a marvelous thing that is going to allow me to combine two things I value most - helping people and making a movie about it."
"I'm optimistic about what we're doing. I think we're really going to be able to make a heartfelt, informative and entertaining film," he said.
Steffens vows to stay out of Hanson's way when it comes to navigating their course.
"The worse it gets for him, the better it gets for me," he said, already imagining the rough days ahead and how he will capture them on film.
And while rough days are sure to come, there have been plenty of pre-hike trials. Mainly, fund-raising.
Hanson and Steffens have secured a number of corporate sponsors who have donated camping supplies, clothing and dehydrated trail foods. Yet Hanson would like to raise more money to support the hike and movie making.
His hike won't qualify as a nonprofit organization, so instead Hanson arranged for Capable Partners, a local and registered nonprofit that aims to make outdoor activities accessible to persons with disabilities, to be his fiscal agent.
Tax-deductible donations can be made to Capable Partner in his name.
One way or another, however, two men plan to kick off their hike on March 1.
"We're stepping off a ledge," Steffens said. "We're leaving all our familiar patterns behind and heading into a different world. We're going to inhabit a different space for the next eight months."
"I really don't know what sort of physical challenges are ahead," Hanson said. "I'm not anticipating problems and I can't say how this experience is going to alter my own perceptions, but I do know it will certainly be something to talk about."
Reader Comments
Posted: Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Article comment by:
Robin
I was lucky to interview Mike Hanson yesterday see blog at: http://backpackbasecamp.com/basecamp/blogengine.net/post/2010/03/02/Interview-with-Blind-AT-Hiker-Walking-2175-Miles.aspx
